Your tires have a recommended PSI for a reason.
Snow, ice, and frigid temperatures can make wintertime driving a challenge. Drivers deal with this in a variety of ways: from winterizing their cars and keeping emergency kits in their trunk, to paying more attention to their tires.
For example, some people mistakenly believe that reducing their tire pressure will improve their traction. Others understand that tires tend to lose air pressure in cold weather, but incorrectly assume that the solution is over-inflating their tires. As it turns out, while that’s not exactly helpful, it’s not harmless, either.
What happens when tires are over-inflated
Over-inflating your tires puts both the tires and people’s safety at risk. Over-inflating your tires can cause wear on the center of the tires much faster than on the remainder of the tire. This results in losing thousands of miles of use on each tire.
Not only will over-inflating your tires result in having to replace them before their time, it also reduces their traction. Ultimately, an over-inflated tire decreases driver safety and increases the risk of accidents by a significant margin.
When is a tire considered over-inflated?
Let’s say you’re doing your monthly air pressure check. You notice that a tire’s PSI is higher than the manufacturer’s recommendation. Is a tire with an extra two or three psi considered officially over-inflated a safety risk? Not quite. Anything over 10 psi will create tire wear and traction loss on most passenger tires.
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