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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Goodyear certainly seems to have a big piece of the responsibility here. But I don't hold the RV manufacturers blameless -- they were the ones selecting and buying a low-speed commercial delivery vehicle tire for a passenger application.

Also I'm inclined to believe that many owners didn't inflate them properly. A high load range tire will have a much higher pressure than passenger car owners are accustomed to. Most people just inflate their tires to about 30PSI and that's generally fine for a passenger car.

Most consumer tire pumps or inflators would probably have difficulty getting to the proper pressure which can be twice that more than a normal passenger car tire.

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Did the RV manufacturers know it was a low-speed commercial delivery tire?

Goodyear apparently marketed it to the RV industry:

In a lawsuit filed later against Goodyear, the Woods family accused the company of selling a defective tire that had been marketed to recreational motorhome makers, even though it knew the G159 couldn’t handle highway speeds when equipped on an RV.

What's not clear is whether or not the speed rating was known.

The need for proper tire inflation is literally just about the first topic of conversation or item covered when introducing new owners to an RV, be it a class A/B/C motor home or a trailer.

Every dealer who provides RVs to consumers does a pre-delivery inspection walkthrough covering proper operation of all the systems. Tires, their safety implications, how to read pressure, what proper pressure is, what kind of guages and inflators are needed are all quite prominent in those briefings.

This is not to say that owners aren't negligent about inflation pressure, in fact too many are. That's why it is covered so extensively. But it's negligence and plain old bone-headedness, not lack of information that is to blame for those who run with improper inflation.

Any decent track pump can easily get to an order of magnitude higher. I routinely pump bike tires to 125 psi. Back to the point, tires are the most important piece of kit in regards to driving/riding handling quality, and usually one of the most underestimated. I wish people in general paid more attention to the state and quality of their tires.

The problem isn't solely the level of pressure, it's also the time it takes to reach that pressure. If you are running a little electric pump to get a truck tire to 60 PSI, it's going to take a long time even if the pump doesn't overheat and burn out.

You just gave me a great idea. My car has a smat electric pump that I don’t trust. I’m going to store in the car a compact track pump in case I have to use the patch kit. Thanks for the insight on the lateral thinking.

By a "compact track pump" do you mean a bicycle pump? It surely doesn't deliver the volume needed, a car tyre must be many times the volume of a bike tyre -- I see figures of 1.35 and 22 litres respectively.

So to shift the volume of air needed to get your car tyre to 60psi you're going to be looking at c. 10 times the duration of pumping as getting a bike tyre to 125psi. If it's a racing tyre and an SUV tyre the duration multiplier would probably be much higher.

My car runs on 2 bar, a little less than half of your example of 60 psi, completely feasible as a plan B.

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