Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions? • Hacker News Board

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#191

Post by Marsymars » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #140

dragontamer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite IMO. Anyone who has done any amount of virtual traffic engineering (aka: Factorio, City Skylines, OpenTTD) knows that intersections are where the bottlenecks are. Its incredibly difficult to design a max-throughput intersection. Roads have a huge amount of throughput, most "traffic" just gets stuck at offramps and traffic lights. Narrowing a road to make room for bike lanes is a lower cost than people might…

> it doesn't matter if you're a 2-lane, 4-lane, or 8-lane road If you halve the capacity of the road, you're just going to spread the same cars (and congestion) among twice as many lights...and make traffic far worse.

Depends. My commute home from my office has a 6km of a three-lane road and then a single traffic light. The road never gets backed up more than a couple km from the traffic light, so even dropping it to a single lane wouldn't make any real difference to the throughput. The speed you drive on the three-lane road also makes no real difference to the throughput as long as you get the same amount of cars through the traffic light at each cycle.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#192

Post by mrich » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

The German Post designed the Streetscooter a while back which is an electric delivery van. They also claim "zero fine dust driving". But how does that work? It is quite hard to have a fully closed system so no particles can escape. Well, their solution is quite clever: They are filtering the air in general, so can also consume particles emitted from other cars, even when the vehicle is not moving. So they could even get to net negative fine dust emissions :)

https://www.dekra-solutions.com/2018/01/fine-dust-free-drivi...

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#193

Post by notatoad » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #85

annoyingnoob wrote: post #31

The claims here seem dubious. They tested one type of brand new tire. Then they conclude that "high-quality" tires are somehow better without providing any evidence to support that claim. While tires may very well be a source of pollution I have to wonder where the money for the work came from.

Shitty tires start with the same tread depth, but wear out in 25-35k miles. High quality tires usually go 50-60k.

they're also measuring vastly more "emissions" over the life of the tire than there is material in the tires, so it appears that what they're actually measuring is the asphalt dust that's being created by the interaction between the road surface and the tire - a longer-wearing tire would presumably be harder material and cause slightly more road wear as a trade-off to less tire wear, so if they had actually tested it a higher-quality tire might cause more of what they're classing as emissions.

but you can't really make an assumption either way when you've only measured on a sample size of one.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#194

Post by gentleman11 » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

This is the perfect opportunity to link people to Robert Heineken’s story: the Roads Must Roll. In it, there are a series of road towns, where roads are more like moving sidewalks. Very neat stuff, I read it as a teenager and then re-listened to a great audiobook version recently too (bundled with the man who sold the moon, which is the prophecy foretelling of Elon musk)

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

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#195

Post by undersuit » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #143

u801e wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of tire wear, I find that my rear bicycle tire will last roughly 3000 miles/4800 kilometers. Even summer performance tires on cars will last about 8000 miles (and most all season tires will go for at least 20,000 miles).

I recall a buddy proselytizing on the virtues of rotating your bike tires every couple thousand miles, which for that group was about once a year (and replace in the spring)

My issue with that is how your control comes from the front tire on bicycles. Anytime I have a tire issue the front tire gets the newest rubber. Rotating tires is just spreading the wear and reduced traction to your steering tire.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#196

Post by Marsymars » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

o-__-o wrote: post #67

taneq wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do most people’s tyres last longer than 50k kms? Maybe I’m doing something wrong...

Yes. A high UTQG rating will mean your tires will last forever at the expense of traction, road noise, etc. The last set of tires I bought at Costco lasted 70k miles, but also increased wet stopping distance and introduced a roar to cabin noise. My latest set have a UTQG near 0 and will only last about 10k miles but they make no noise and have insane amounts of grip (think race car tire)

If you drive less and have separate summer/winter tires, it has the odd side-effect of making long-wear tires not worthwhile, as the life of the tread depth will exceed the life of the rubber due to age.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#197

Post by vinw » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #66

vinw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5.8 grams per kilometer would mean in only 10,000 KM your tyres lose 58 Kg. Seems way off.

I’m really sorry but SI is SI. It’s literally “km” for kilometre and “kg” for kilogram.

Good spot, don’t be sorry!

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#198

Post by gentleman11 » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

kungtotte wrote: post #173

ratel wrote: post #164

Hold on: The claim is this: > "Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles." It does not seem to be a mistake: > "Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a factor of over 1,000." A tire might way up to 15 kilograms f…

They're torn up from the road and rubbed off from the tyres themselves. The majority is obviously coming from the road. There's been studies done here in Sweden since we've banned studded winter tyres in some areas of Stockholm in an effort to reduce road wear and improve air quality. I don't know of any sources in English off the top of my head though. The last time I read an article about it though (2+ years ago, d…

I have been wearing studded slip on crampons when walking my dog this winter. The ice has been ridiculous, I’ve fallen twice already when not wearing them. Not great for the sidewalks, I know, but the dog needs his walks or he would... get sad

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#199

Post by jessaustin » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

ratel wrote: post #164

Hold on: The claim is this: > "Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles." It does not seem to be a mistake: > "Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a factor of over 1,000." A tire might way up to 15 kilograms f…

Not sure if this test was set up to measure this, but brake dust, which contains all sorts of noxious particles, is a huge component of automobile emissions. This probably doesn't answer your question, however, because brake pads themselves only weigh so much...

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#200

Post by pshc » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #13

kevingadd wrote: post #2

When I first moved to the SF bay area I didn't have AC in my apartment so I had to leave the windows open during the summer. After a year of leaving them open there was a thick coat of tire dust all along the windowsill since my window faced a road. :x

How do you know it was tire dust and not just regular dust?

I had the same experience, in SF too. Second floor corner apartment on Fell St, a wide and busy road along the park. The windowsills on that side accumulated black dust unlike the other side of the corner.