Microblog Memes

I still have no idea how I got 4 tires for about $180 in the Midwest a few years ago

There's a combination of anti-regulation sentiments and poverty. Rural towns in particular have a lot of old ass beaters driving around and people don't have the income to fix or replace those vehicles. But yeah, that's also where you get a lot of the "gub'ment can take it from my cold dead hands" types of attitudes, even (especially?) when it's for the safety and well-being of people. Hell people fought restaurant smoking laws up until the early 2010's, and some states still have no helmet law for motorcycles.

It is. Only 15 states have a periodic inspection.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States

Kentucky is laughable. It's literally only "inspected" if you bought the car from out of state, and the inspection was $15, and a sheriff comes out tells you to step on the brakes and turn your headlights and emergency lights on. You need 1 working headlight, any one working tail light, (yes you'll pass with just that tiny one in the center of your rear window,) and any two indicator lights to pass. The guy that did mine kicked my tires and said, "yep, it's a car."

Here in Maryland, my car, that I bought new in 1999, has technically never needed a safety inspection. Emissions every two years, but no safety. Isn't that a fun thought? If I were to sell it, it would need to be inspected then (and it's a pretty thorough inspection), but otherwise...nah.

I keep it in better condition and would never let the tires get to this point. A few months ago, I replaced a set of tires because they had aged out, and even that was longer than I usually like to keep them. But not everyone has the money or inclination (or insanity) to keep a car that old in good condition.

But, statistically, there's little evidence that safety inspections reduce crashes which kind of makes you wonder whether it's really worth it. It's one of those things that seems logical, but the statistics may not bear that out. At most, it's only a small improvement, not a drastic difference.

Man I just went down a rabbit hole and no one can agree on car tyres. It seems you're right about special racing tyres that melt and attach to the road (after warm up laps), but no one can agree on whether bald car tyres in the dry have more grip than treaded ones (in ideal conditions). For sure, wet, snow, sand, gravel, etc. You want the tread, which is pretty much every public road since they are not swept perfectly clean and smooth. But I could not find an answer to whether bald tyres grip the road better. People say they don't, which is why racing cars use slicks, but that's not proof, even if bald tyres grip better they would still use soft tyres for even better grip.

I found reddit threads with engineers saying one thing and other engineers saying they are wrong. Racing forums with non-engineers saying the soft slicks are the reason for grip and bald regular car tyres have less grip. No one can back up their claims.

It's obvious that it's a bad idea to drive on bald tyres because the road is always an imperfect surface, but I can't even find a hypothetical answer to the question with any confidence.