Washington, D.C.-The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has warned of the danger of operating vehicles with under-inflated tires. “Driving with substantially under-inflated tires can lead to crashes and tragedy, in addition to reducing fuel efficiency and shortening tire life,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta warns.
According to a NHTSA survey, 27 percent of the passenger cars driven on U.S. roadways have one or more under-inflated tires. Moreover, 32 percent of light trucks (including sport utility vehicles (SUVs), vans, and pickup trucks) are driven with one or more under-inflated tires.
The NHTSA message was directed primarily at Labor Day travelers, but the lesson it teaches applies to the fire service as well.
Myriad career/volunteer fire departments use full-sized or mid-sized SUVs as chief cars or utility vehicles. Many volunteer fire departments use full-sized, retrofitted pickup trucks as their brush vehicles. And obviously, every fire department has one or more pieces of apparatus sitting on its floor waiting to respond to the next emergency. Keeping these vehicles’ tires inflated at the appropriate pressure is critical to your safety and job performance.
As NHTSA points out, when tires are properly inflated, the vehicles can be handled more safely, tire life is increased, and less fuel is consumed.
If you add up to 6,000 pounds of water to the weight of the truck, the chassis, the pump, and various other equipment today’s rigs carry, it’s easy to see how an improperly inflated tire could blow. Similarly, rescue trucks, depending on their design, can carry up to 15 people in addition to thousands of pounds of equipment. Vehicle and tire manufacturers tell us to inflate tires to a particular pressure designed to carry the weight of the apparatus in which we respond every day.
Moreover, what fire department today would not appreciate saving money in fuel costs and tire replacements?
Excuses are harder to come by these days. Tire pressure gauges are inexpensive, and some emergency vehicles have pressure indicators built into the wheels.
The recent Firestone debacle has taught us that tires can be our best friend or our worst enemy. Treat them right, and they’ll get you to the call consistently. Treat them wrong, and they’ll fail–in the best scenario–leaving you at the side of the road wondering what happened and who is now going to save the life you were called to save.
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