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Comment by wkirby | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely curious if there are any real efforts to address this available to the consumer. In the kind of idiot who will buy more expensive tires because they shed less plastic, but as far as I’m aware I don’t actually have that opportunity.

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Michelin is at least looking into it: https://www.michelin.com/en/media/magazine/michelin-is-takin...

Nokia is also working on green tires with more biodegradation

https://www.nokiantyres.com/about-us/news-article/nokian-tyr...

Thank you for a real answer.

Doesn't address the tires directly, but smaller, lighter cars are available. Maybe greater awareness about pollution from tires would help that become more of a sales factor.

I already drive the tiniest car I can reasonably fit a 7 month old int and I’m strong advocate for the death penalty for anyone who drives a car larger than a mid-size sedan.

Steel wheels on a steel track don’t have this issue.

This is a fair point except I live in small-town New England. You think there’s transit? There’s not even a sidewalk.

In the sense that they don't emit plastic particles, sure. But trains absolutely do create metal particle air pollution.

I think it would be an interesting comparison, given how often our local light rail trains operate nearly empty. If it has less than about 20 people per train car it is toting around more weight per passenger than a private vehicle with just the driver.

Steel dust has the nice property of turning into mostly harmless metal oxides rather quickly.

Iron isn’t the only metal in those wheels, some are more poisonous.

Stainless is mostly iron and chromium, sometimes nickel. Some oxidation states of chromium are indeed toxic, but the most stable form is chromium(III), which is harmless enough that you can buy it as a supplement. Nickel also occurs naturally in soil and many foods and is not accumulating in the body. The kidneys can remove it. Only large doses are problematic.

Huh. Downvoted for mentioning a fact that has been studied in depth and is uncontroversial. You guys crack me up.

Maybe I have this wrong somehow but I thought that could be categorised as "wear".

IE don't buy the tyres that last 1000[preferred units of measure], buy the tyres that last longer.

But then you could get into "performance per unit of wear" and how that is all defined is a wombat hole of discussion.

You would have to make some trade-offs with emissions/fuel economy though. Harder wearing compounds generally lead to higher rolling resistance, which means higher energy use per distance. I’m inclined to think that microplastics pollution might be worse than tailpipe emissions (or electricity generation pollution depending on your source)?, but it wouldn’t be straightforward. While there will probably always be uses for autos, we should encourage other methods of transport whenever possible.

I guess when the tyres wear down it all ends up as bits of microplastic so long life tyres would be better. There tends to be a bit of a trade off between long life and high grip though.

Buy a (motor-)bike and only use the car when you really need it.

I have a bike, I love it. I also have a 7-month old daughter and live in small-town New England — a car is non-negotiable because of a century of choices about the built environment.

And increase your chance of death by 40x?

https://i.redd.it/ybzo8fbxlcm21.png

I would guess most of those deaths are cause by collision with a car. So getting rid of the cars would solve that problem.

So you moved the goal posts from "switch to motor bike" to "switch everyone to motor bike".

You can influence your chance of accidents by driving safely. Or take public transport.

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