Today’s the day studded tires become legal in Washington. It’s also the day our expensive highways start getting chewed up. Needlessly.
Studded tires have long outlived their usefulness. Advances in tire treads and snow and ice removal techniques have made them obsolete. The state Department of Transportation, Transportation Commission and the Federal Highway Administration all would love to do away with them. But efforts in Olympia to ban them, or even to charge a modest fee to help pay for the damage they do, routinely get shot down or bottled up in committee.
So some drivers continue to use studded tires from Nov. 1-March 31. And those little metal rods protruding from the treads continue to hammer away at the road surface, creating dangerous ruts. You know, those deep parallel grooves that make your heart race when you’re changing lanes at 60 mph, or, when they’re filled with water, can cause your tires to lose their grip.
The damage is expensive to fix. The DOT estimates that studs shorten the average life cycle of pavement by four years, adding about $11 million each year in repaving costs. Talk about waste.
Even the Midwestern ice boxes of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, where driving in snow is a way of life, have banned studded tires because of the damage they do to roads.
That nice, new pavement on southbound I-5 south of Everett, which cost $8 million to lay down, won’t last as long as it should because of studs. Sections using experimental “quiet pavement” made with rubberized asphalt – which has gotten rave reviews – might be even more susceptible to stud damage.
And, contrary to what many drivers believe, studs are less safe than regular all-season tires in the vast majority of circumstances. According to the DOT, studs provide some measure of improved stopping ability on untreated icy roads at or near freezing. But on a statewide average, such conditions exist just 1 percent of the time. On wet or dry pavement, studies show that cars with studded tires don’t stop as quickly because there’s less rubber in contact with the pavement.
On balance, you may be less safe with studs than without them. Because of the ruts they cause, the rest of us are, too. And studs cost taxpayers $11 million a year.
Uh, lawmakers, are you listening?
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