Studded tires ban: No ‘small sacrifice’

The inventor who figures out how to manufacture snow tires with retractable studs is going to make a real pile.

In the meantime we’re left to argue about saving lives or keeping Oregon’s highways rut-free.

The debate over the use of studded tires is hardly a new one, of course.

Every now and again critics dredge up ODOT’s estimate that studs cause $40 million in damage to the state’s roads each year. Studded tires are blamed specifically for wearing ruts into the asphalt.

The current anti-stud spokesman is Jeff Bernards.

He wants to get an initiative on the ballot in 2012 that would let Oregon voters decide whether to ban studded tires.

“Our state is in trouble financially and I think it’s a small sacrifice to ask that handful of people to forego studded tire use,” Bernards said.

We’re not sure what, or who, he means by “handful.”

And as such we’re not as sanguine as Bernards seems to be about the relative size of this sacrifice he thinks we ought to make.

We wouldn’t, at any rate, describe as a “small sacrifice” sliding across a slippery freeway into the path of an 18-wheeler.

In trying to bolster his argument about the cost of studded tire damage, Bernards contends that it would be less expensive — and we just have to use the direct quote here — “if we paid those people to not go to work, that’s how much money we’re wasting letting people drive around for five months with studs, that it might be icy.”

First, Baker County drivers don’t buy studded tires because “it might be icy.”

We buy them because we know it will be icy, sometimes for days on end.

Second, the idea that ODOT or any other government agency can, or should, pay workers to stay home is ludicrous.

Third, we don’t subscribe to the notion that people should be able to buy products that protect themselves and their families only when the government “lets” them.

All that said, we think it’s worthwhile to educate drivers about what studded tires can and can’t do.

In general, studded tires have less traction than regular tires on wet or dry pavement.

Which in most years describes driving conditions west of the Cascades for all but a few days.

It’s also true that in certain cases, even when a road is snow-covered, studless snow tires grab as tenaciously as studded tires do.

We have no doubt that there are westside drivers who run studded tires every winter without gaining any safety benefit.

And we’re all for encouraging those drivers to reconsider whether spending the extra money to have two sets of tires is a worthwhile investment.

But the statewide ban that Bernards advocates would sacrifice, if  we can borrow his word, the real margin of safety that thousands of other drivers realize by using studded tires in conditions where conventional or even studless snow tires simply aren’t as effective.

As for damage to highways, which is the primary exhibit in the case against studded tires, we’re not persuaded that the effects are sufficiently costly to warrant an outright prohibition.

For one thing, although ODOT continues to cite the $40 million-per-year estimate, the agency also admits that what it actually spends to repair damage blamed on studded tires amounts to $11 million per year.

We wonder, too, whether some of the wear attributed to studded tires wasn’t caused by semi-trucks that can haul 100,000-pound loads.

We’re not traffic engineers, but it seems unlikely that even experts can look at a section of rutted road and state with unimpeachable certainty how much of the damage resulted from studded tires and how much from 50-ton trucks.

The climate takes a toll on roads, too — especially here east of the Cascades, where frost heaves are an unavoidable result of temperatures that range from 25 below to 105 above.

It’s noteworthy, too, that ODOT’s actions do not seem like those of an agency that considers studded tires the scourge of the state’s highways.

After all,ODOT has extended the legal season for studded tires twice this spring, first from the normal April 1 until April 11, and then until April 17, both extensions due to persistent snowstorms in the mountains.

The bottom line here is that all drivers, through gas taxes and other fees, pay for the privilege of traveling on maintained highways.

That the use of studded tires contributes to the maintenance bill is not appreciably different from ODOT accruing the extra cost necessary to plow snow from mountain passes.

In both cases the purpose is by any reasonable standard a valid one: to help people reach their destination, alive.