The reason we shouldn’t enact such a regulation is because the statutes books are already bulging with unenforceable regulations. Why add another?
I agree with your other comments. People who monitor these things and that pay attention to their warning lights will always do so, and people that don’t won’t. We get posters here who start out with “my Check engine light has been blinking for six months and my car suddenly went dead. What’s broken?”. God must love such people… he made a lot of them.
California made tire pressure checks a reqirement three and a half years ago.
California to require mandatory tire-pressure checks at automotive businesses. California has passed a new law requiring most auto servicing sites to check tire pressure at each visit and add air when necessary.
Nevada, I seriously doubt if this has any benefit whatsoever. Having the tire pressure checked once a year at the annual inspection is almost meaningless, and even if it gets a second check on a given year because it needed a repair that doesn’t add much margin either.
I don’t pretend to have a solution. I don’t. But I don’t think mandatory tire pressure checks is one. We have too many meaningless laws on the books already. Mandatory tire checks probably makes the legislator feel like he/she has done something, but that’s why we have so many useless statutes already.
Gee, how do they decide what the “correct” pressure is? Suppose I want to take my truck “mudding” right after service…or suppose I want to haul to my GVWR on the highway. Those two activities require vastly different settings! Doorjamb is a “one size fits all” setting based around “typical” usage patterns.
I don’t mind it being checked, and being advised what it should be, but when somebody alters the pressure without my express consent, they are usurping my command authority as captain of that vehicle!
I swear, every day I find a new reason to be glad I don’t live in Cali. That said, I think it hit -10 F here last night…
Yeah, I know. So now every shop has to check and adjust tire pressure and document it on the repair order and keep said paperwork available for at least 3 years. As I understand it that applies to fleet service too. A lineman stops by his shop to get the oil in his truck topped off and someone has to check tires and document that he did. So the average driver stops in for a pair of wiper blades and you get your tires aired up and get a paper saying so.
I’m not in CA, but it’s my understanding that the pressures are documented on every ticket and that no car leaves with improperly inflated tires–at least according to the paperwork. I’d sure like to know how many times the tires are actually checked vs. just being scribbled on the repair order that they were. Or how many shops are in compliance with the law anyway.
More regs, more requirements, more documentation. Seems that everyone is responsible for the well-being of the car except the one driving it.
Any fleet vehicle I’ve driven, and there have been a few along the way, required that the fleet maintenance personnel check tire pressures whenever they do maintenance anyway, and the requirements to drive the vehicle always require the driver to do a “walk around” before taking the vehicle out. I seem to recall that was required even on the Air Force maintenance trucks that I occasionally needed to drive.
Those are good policies. But that doesn’t mean I subscribe to such a statute.
I agree with asemaster on the point that everyone is being made responsible except the person driving the car. Really, how difficult is it to check tire pressure? I think if people are going to operate 3,500 lb. projectiles in close proximity to each other on a daily basis, maybe we should be a little better trained.
Another thing that doesn’t help is that gas stations with free air hoses are a vanishing breed, at least around here. More and more of them are convenience stores and not service garages. They put those exterior wall-mounted tire inflators that you have to feed a quarter, and the damn things don’t work right half the time.
On shops: My dad took his Cadillac STS to the dealer service dept. 3 times to have the tire pressure checked, and they left them at 15 PSI. I finally took the thing to a gas station with an air hose and did it myself. I have my own compressor now.
@db4690, that’s not good enough. CA regulations clearly state that you must have a pressure gauge that is accurate to within 2 psi. Throw away (or send out for recalibration) the ones that are off by 5psi.
I don’t like laws that move responsibility from the individual to the service industry. I understand the desire but not the unintended consequences. Just like holding bars and bar tenders responsible for drunks and the damage they do, you can bet dollars to donuts the lawyers will be tripping over each other to blame the last service center when a blowout causes a crash. Personal responsibility, just remove it from our vocabulary now… sigh…
