Michelin does put out some great safety information regarding tires.
Goodyear is the major supplier of tires on law enforcement vehicles today.
About 90% of all police vehicles on the road today have the Goodyear Eagle
RSA's on them or Firestone Firehawk PV41's.
In large states like Florida and Texas, Troopers don't have the luxury
of having a vehicle fleet garage near them. It's up to them to make sure
the routine maintenance is done on the vehicle and it's up to the Patrol to
have an agreement with a local garage to supply them with such services.
In bigger cities, Officers tend to ignore the cruisers tires more often
then Troopers. On any given fleet check, you can see city police vehicles
with questionable treadwear patterns or less then 4/32nds of tread. This
becomes very dangerous especially if the cruiser is in a high speed pursuit
and the cruiser loses control and hits an innocent party. The City is wide
open for civil litigation due to the accident. If the tires had low wear on
the tires, any ambulance chasing lawyer could make a big deal out of this.
Most departments don't hold the officers accountable for the upkeep of
there vehicles like a State Police/Highway Patrol agency does. I could go
my city police garage right now and pick out 40-50 cars that need tires.
Most of these patrol cars are also having 4 new tires placed on it and most
of the time the alignment is never fixed or checked. I know most Highway
Patrol's/State Police agencies hold there troopers more accountable then
city/county agencies, but when you're 100-200 miles from your state garage
some people would overlook.
I believe departments should make it a discipline issue if someone fails
to do the regularly scheduled services on the vehicles tires. Rotate,
balance, air checks and alignments are critical to maximizing tread life.
One of the most overlooked issues is smaller departments not putting on
the correct tires for the Crown Vics/Impala's. I've had a couple of smaller
departments have non police pursuit certified private label tires on there
cruisers. I told the Chief he would be open to severe liability both from
the officer and if they were in a pursuit and something happened. I
explained to him that the federal government has a list of police certified
tires. The common 3 are the Goodyear Eagle RSA, Firestone Firehawk PV41 and
the General XP2000VR. For severe weather Goodyear makes a speed rated snow
tire called the Ultra Grip GW2, and Firestone has one called the PVS. Which
stands for Pursuit Vehicle Snow. Most of these tires are very cheap on
state contract pricing cost around $50-60 each.
