Producing Smarter Tire Buyers and Users?

Tire Efficiency Consumer Information BETA

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Producing Smarter Tire Buyers and Users?

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Producing Smarter Tire Buyers and Users?
Moderator, Nov 15, 2009, 10:20 AM

The new tire label is only part of the “national tire maintenance consumer education program” the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) requires NHTSA to establish. NHTSA already has a lot of information about tire size, tread, balance and alignment, rotation, and repair on its safercar.gov website. The site has guides to checking tire inflation (including a video) and tire maintenance. NHTSA also publishes a tire safety pamphlet in paper and online, and runs public service announcements (including one about tire pressure in hot weather that has become a cult classic.)

NHTSA has several ideas about how to promote consumer awareness of the new tire ratings. These include: a new section of safercar.gov that would consolidate all consumer tire information resources in a single location; creating a “fuel savings calculator” to show the yearly fuel savings associated with different tires; and building relationships with local universities and high schools to reach out to the student driving population.
The ultimate goal seems to be to change consumer behavior, so that people will research and learn about tires before ever stepping in a retailer. Is this idea of getting consumers to thinking ahead a realistic goal? Do you plan ahead for tire purchases or do you typically learn of the need for new tires and buy them that day?
What else could NHTSA be doing to create more informed tire consumers?

HAVE YOUR SAY by replying in the comment box below, or DIG IN to the what and how of NHTSA’s plans for a “national tire maintenance consumer education program.”

Tags: upcoming

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BarbaraB

5:12 pm November 20, 2009

The information disclosure requirement here is a trade off between two types of regulatory approaches. One can view the government’s role as providing a better informational floor for intelligent consuming or one can say to NHSTA set minimum tire efficiency and safety standards that all new tires must meet. Congress obviously made that choice for the agency and to rail at NHTSA for implementing a congressional directive is to pick the wrong target.

dotljm

1:57 am November 19, 2009

Ideally, educating consumers is a good thing, and obviously providing accurate, useable information can be one way of changing behavior. This approach looks a lot like NHTSA trying to comply with the broad consumer education mandate in the law. One suspects that NHTSA recognizes an approach like this will probably do little in the way of getting useable information to the vast majority of tire consumers. Why? Because NHTSA probably understands that added fuel efficiency associated with tire choice is generally not near the top of the tire consumers list when purchasing a new tire. Nonetheless, this appears like a low cost to government (NHTSA) way of complying with the statutory mandate while making additional information available to the one in a million tire consumers sufficiently motivated to search it out.

ConcernedCitizen45

10:45 pm November 15, 2009

[Deleted and moved to quarantine by moderator for violating the Conditions of Site Use (see Terms & Conditions) on Nov. 15, 2009]

JStarrSr

9:48 pm November 15, 2009

In my opinion, we need the government even if ist wasteful. We should all support this attempt to force the big tire companies to reveal efficiency information. Transparency is good.

NYCMuscleman18

10:58 pm November 15, 2009

Do you think they have that information? How much will this cost?

9:22 pm November 15, 2009

Yeah, this sucks. Protect the environment by saving all that colored paper.

mcorder

8:15 pm November 15, 2009

Another fine example of bureaucracy gone berserk! It would create a bunch of useless information that no one would understand, care about or ever look at.

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