Citation

Thiriez K, Bondy N. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2003; 2003: 12 p..

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

In 2000, Congress passed the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act. Section 13 of this act directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete a rulemaking within one year. This rulemaking requires implementation of a warning system in new motor vehicles (to be phased-in beginning with model year 2003) to indicate to the operator when a tire is significantly under-inflated. In support of rulemaking activities mandated by Section 13 of the TREAD Act, the National Center for Statistics and Analysis of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has completed an intensive data collection effort on the state of America's tires. The Tire Pressure Special Study (TPSS) was designed to assess to what extent passenger vehicle operators are aware of the recommended tire pressures for their vehicles, the frequency and the means they use to measure their tire pressure, and how significantly the actual measured tire pressure differed from the manufacturer's recommended tire pressure. Measurements were taken and interviews were conducted to compile a rich database of over 11,000 passenger vehicles (44,000 tires). This paper discusses the methodology of the TPSS as well as the extent of under-inflation found in the field and the attitudes and maintenance habits of drivers, the vehicle placard and the requirement of an onboard tire pressure monitoring system. The stringent requirement for enactment of the rule requiring tire pressure monitoring systems required that data on the frequency and pervasiveness of under-inflation be collected and provided in a short time period. To minimize the survey start-up and to provide a trained cadre of data collectors, field data collection was conducted through the infrastructure of the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS). The NASS CDS is a nationally representative sample of all police-reported motor vehicle traffic crashes that occur in the United States in which at least one passenger vehicle was towed from the crash scene due to damage from the crash.