on the right margin.
To see what others have said, click either the phrase “x comments” or the New Tire Labeling: Helping Consumers and the Environment?
Moderator – 10:10 am, November 16, 2009
Most car owners don’t realize that the kind of tires they buy affects the mileage they get and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions their car produces. The federal government hopes this will change under a new rule (regulation) proposed by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The new rule would require tire manufacturers to provide fuel efficiency ratings for most passenger vehicle tires. For the next ten days, we’ll be talking about what’s in the new program and what’s behind it.
The heart of the new program is this label, which would be attached to tires you could buy when you need to replace those that came with your car.
As you can see, there’s more information here than just fuel efficiency. Ratings for treadwear and traction on a wet surface are already required by the government. They’re part of a long Uniform Tire Quality Grading Standards (UTQGS) code molded into the tire sidewall. But, most consumers don’t know about the code, or how to interpret it. NHTSA hopes that reformatting these ratings, and including them on the new label, will make the information more accessible.
What do you think? Will this new label give consumers the information they need to make smart choices – for themselves and the environment – when they buy replacement tires?
HAVE YOUR SAY by responding below or DIG IN to learn more about what’s behind the design of the new consumer tire label.
Tags: upcoming
I agree with jdmiller and msidenf and have expressed my self on this topic earlier in my posts. However I am less troubled by the trade off problem. This is ultimately a choice that should be left to the individual.
This rule is not all that helpful. It does not inform consumers about how to make the trade off between energy efficiency and safety. What would be helpful would be some indication of what a safety rating of 25 neans in terms of loss of control under various conditions.
Less problematic but still incomplete is the trade off between energy efficiency and durability. Presumably the rational consumer wants to minimize the sum of gas costs and having to buy more tires over a certain number of years of driving. A metric making the cost trade off more transparent would be helpful and probably easy for this trade off.
This would be similar to the “Energy Star” rating placed on electronics. At times these have controversy surrounding their accuracy, but overall they help consumers to know that they are buying a more efficient appliance. Makes sense to me, lets just hope they are actually accurate.
why do people need this for their tires, this is dumb