Cars - For Car Enthusiasts

California drivers want to save money and want to reduce harmful emissions, so I think Californians will be very pleased by having higher-quality tires on the market,” said Bill Magavern, the policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air

This guy is huffing everything but clean air. What a joke. His "savings" is roughly $0.003/mile.

First of all, an OEM tire for my car is $260/per, while a highly rated Yokohama was $125. Bill can blow "Saving money" straight out his windy ass.

Second, proper alignment has significantly more effect on savings than rolling resistance.

Third, when my parents bought their first hybrid in 2004, the first thing they changed was larger tires because that sucker floated like mad at freeway speeds. It was scary when a large truck passed and blew the car around in the lane. Stopping distance improved too. Safety was worth the hit of 3 MPG.

Some of us take tires seriously. We carefully choose based on location, use, performance, and price. All this does is ban safe options and reduce competition.

Edit: my post wasn't supposed to sound mean as it did. :)

You know what would reduce tire wear, emissions, accidents, and money? Moving away from all the ways we push car usage. Not just more mass transit, but structuring a society back from the urban and suburban sprawl that has made cars so necessary.

There will be the usual "just get a job and buy groceries close to home or move near it". Sure, if you can. Not everyone can do that, and if everyone did do that, there wouldn't be places to move to. Some cities have tried to win people back to living downtown and having everything nearby, but it only works for some situations.

I don't know a solution, not all problems have them. Sometimes you create issues that are dead ends. Can we undo what was done? But the real answer to the things the article mentions is simply less use and demand, somehow. Not new products to allow the status quo. That's a band-aid, and they always wear off.

List of exemptions:

• Competition tires designed for motorsports
• Winter-type snow tires
• All-season winter performance tires
• Used and retreaded tires
• Deep tread tires
• Tires designed for ATVs and other off-road vehicles
• Large off-road tires for use up to 99 mph
• Motorcycle tires
• Temporary-use spare tires
• Small tires with ≤13-inch nominal rim diameter
• Limited production tires (<15,000 per year)
• Tires sold for use on an emergency vehicle
• High load index tires (122 or greater)
• Tires not capable of sustaining speeds over 50 mph
• Space saver tires