“They tie up burdens that are heavy and unbearable and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they refuse to lift a finger to remove them.” — Matthew 23:4
I remember passing the place in 2000 where the accident occurred. People had laid flowers on the side of I-26 in South Carolina, 20 miles from Columbia, memorializing the spot where a head-on collision wiped out most of one family and killed a delivery truck driver whose tire had blown out, leading him to cross the median into the path of an SUV filled with family members heading toward the beach.
It was a crash no one could have foreseen, but it happened because a tire failed and the driver couldn’t control his vehicle. People who knew the family told me the tire that blew had recently been inspected and declared to be safe, so negligence wasn’t the cause.
Because our lives depend upon safe car and truck tires, governments should not create barriers to purchasing them, but that is not how the state of California does things. California officials lead the nation in dreaming up heavy new burdens to lay on the state’s residents and then claim that they are just trying to make people’s lives better.
In a recent ruling, the California Energy Commission has laid down new rules about replacement tires that California residents are allowed to buy after 2029. The agency declared:
The tires that come on new cars are typically designed to give drivers better fuel mileage. But average replacement tires are less efficient, meaning that consumers often lose mileage and range when they replace their tires. These cost-saving standards are designed to ensure that replacement tires are at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold on new vehicles.
The standards, approved unanimously by CEC commissioners, will save California drivers nearly $1 billion per year in gasoline and electricity costs, putting money back in their pockets. The standards will also reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2 million metric tons per year, equivalent to taking approximately 400,000 gasoline cars off California roads.
The agency’s press release continues:
“Today, we are proud to approve the nation’s first replacement tire efficiency standards,” said CEC Chair David Hochschild. “This action will help Californians save approximately $1 billion a year on refueling while reducing pollution and extending the range of vehicles on the road. I would like to thank all the consumer organizations, industry leaders and public health advocates for their support of this important step forward for California.”
The incremental cost for consumers is very low – only $1.50 per tire during Phase 1 (2029-2033) and $6.50 per tire during Phase 2 (2033 and beyond). A typical driver of a gasoline car with more efficient tires will save $179 of gasoline over the life of a set of tires, or about seven times the incremental cost. These savings were calculated with gasoline prices of $4.60 per gallon. At the elevated gasoline prices of mid-2026, the savings could be 25% higher than estimated.
As always, the devil is in the details, as one might assume that if these tires provided the huge savings the state predicts, then consumers would already be buying them. While California bureaucrats are claiming that they will save the state’s drivers billions of dollars, this measure will cost them billions of dollars and ultimately lead to more accidents due to tire failure. Forget the alleged 25 percent savings; this will be a nightmare, and the bills will come due soon enough.
In making its claims of consumer protection, the CEC conveniently leaves out the fact that its ruling has eliminated about 70 percent of available replacement tires in California, and it is highly unlikely that the manufacturers of the approved tires will be able to make up the difference:
But (the claims of consumer savings were) contradicted by estimates from Goodyear’s Bret Gladfelty, who claimed that actual price increases for tires could reach several hundred dollars by the 2030s as the industry scrambles to replace the 70% of tires wiped out by the regulations. . . According to the Tire Industry Association, average tire prices could increase from $81 to up to $157. If someone purchased four new tires for his car, the difference could exceed $300 per vehicle.
As someone living in California who just paid more than $1,000 for new replacement tires a few weeks ago, I only can imagine what tires will cost in a few years and given that this state has the nation’s highest poverty rates, there is no doubt that this new regulation will make life much more difficult to millions of people here. Nor is anyone raising these issues exaggerating the problems the new mandates will cause:
Local tire businesses also warn the regulation could lead to higher prices.
“The technology to build those tires is a lot higher, so it will hurt every consumer,” said Junior Tariq of A-1 Auto Tires and Wheels in Sacramento.
“We will absorb the minimum what we can, but everything will go down to the consumer,” said Eliseo Montero, lead mechanic at Blue Star Tires & Auto Repair in Sacramento.
Some tire manufacturers, including Goodyear, also warn that costs will rise.
“Quite simply, this regulation is not ready for adoption,” said Goodyear spokesperson Bret Gladfelty, speaking in opposition during Monday’s commission meeting.
“The sudden rush to pass this regulation as drafted will hurt consumers, drive up costs, and simply flood the state with used tires,” Gladfelty added.
To make matters worse, the newly-mandated tires are thinner than conventional replacements, which means they will wear out more quickly and pose dangers to anyone on the road. According to Siva Raj, a Northern California education activist:
. . .you’re forcing consumers to buy thinner tires — that are more prone to flats — in a state that has the worst road conditions in the country.
We are not just dealing with increased consumer costs that definitely will follow this ruling, should the authorities enforce it—and it already has been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Because new tires will be harder to find—and be more expensive—drivers will put off buying new tires, which means it will be much more likely that the number of people driving on old worn, unsafe tires will increase.
Thus, we once again can see what happens when activists in government target one thing and forget everything else. Economist Thomas Sowell has famously said, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs,” and that clearly applies in this situation. If alleged energy conservation were the only issue that mattered, then one might be more forgiving of California regulators.
Energy issues, however, are not the most important thing here; driver safety is. To put it another way, the state government of California is mandating more highway deaths, which are an absolute certainty should the CEC go through with its plans. The State of California will make drivers purchase tires that are less safe than the ones they are using now, and it also will guarantee that the higher costs will result in people driving longer on worn out tires, which will increase fatal accidents on the state’s highways.
This is not a Chicken Little pronouncement. The sad thing is that as these scenarios fall into place, the usual suspects, including California officials and the anti-capitalist activists, not to mention the media, will blame the tire manufacturers, who will be accused of “putting profits ahead of people.” Instead, we are seeing California officials putting their ideology and environmental fanaticism ahead of human lives.
Once again, California governance is placing huge burdens on people who cannot afford them. But don’t look to Gavin Newsom and others in Sacramento for any help in bearing these things. California drivers will be on their own.
