Item — HN Reader

> There are some laws prohibiting the sale of used tires with less than a certain amount of tread.

I think you're confused. I'll explain why.

Some contries enforce regulations on what tyres are deemed road-legal, due to requirements on safety and minimum grip. It's also why it's illegal to drive around with bald tyres.

However, said countries also allow the sale of tyres for track and competitive use, as long as they are clearly sold as not road-legal and for competitive use only.

So, no. You can buy track tyres. You just can't expect to drive with them when you're dropping off your kids at school and not get a fine.

Also, it should be noted that some motorsport competition ban or restrict the use of slick tyres.

4 comments

Now I'll explain why I think you're confused.

Some jurisdictions ban the sale whatsoever of used tires with less than a certain amount of tread. It's not that you can't put them on a car to drive on public roads, it's that no one can sell them to you. They prohibited the sale rather than the use, thereby interfering with the people wanting to make the purchase for a different purpose.

> Some jurisdictions ban the sale whatsoever of used tires with less than a certain amount of tread.

No, not really. This appears to be the source of your confusion. In Europe+US, thread restrictions are enforced on standard road tyres marketed for use in public roads. You can buy slicks if they are marked for track use, but it's illegal to drive around with them.

But feel free to cite exactly what jurisdiction and regulation prevents you from buying tyres. I'm sure you'll eventually stumble upon the source of your confusion once you start to look up your sources.

Let's try this one:

https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-56/section-56-...

Do you see anything in it restricting the ban to motor vehicles used on public roads?

That depends whether regulators interpret “intended for use on motor vehicles” as “for road use”. The bill’s sponsors seem to think so:

USTMA research shows that more than 30 million used tires are available for sale nationally each year. The legislation does not ban all used tire sales. It targets used tires that have specific, well-established, unsafe conditions. “This is a common-sense, pro-safety, pro-consumer bill,” said Anne Forristall Luke, USTMA president and CEO. “Preventing these unsafe used tires from operating on New Jersey roads will reduce the risk of crashes and save lives. It’s that simple.” [1]

Seems clear to me this is intended to affect road use, although the bill could use an amendment to that effect. I could not find jurisprudence implying resale of racing slicks is illegal under this law.

[1] https://www.ustires.org/newsroom/new-jersey-assembly-advance...

> That depends whether regulators interpret “intended for use on motor vehicles” as “for road use”. The bill’s sponsors seem to think so:

That was their intention, but the effect of a law is not always the same thing -- that's the point. If you go to the local tire place and want to pay them to fit your track car with used tires that have minimal tread on them, is the clerk going to read the legislative history and take the risk that the judge takes that interpretation despite the law saying something else, or are they going to fob you off because corporate says they're not allowed to sell tires like that?

In my experience companies tend to err on the side of making money, so they'd probably just fit them and take the risk of a 500 dollar fine.

You're not thinking like a corporation. What happens if you crash your car after they broke the law to sell you the tires? Corporations will throw away epic amounts of money in the interests of not getting sued.

> A person shall not sell at retail, or offer for sale at retail, to the general public any tire intended for use on a motor vehicle if the tire:

The law you cite literally applies only to general public sales, i.e. where the the intention is to use on public roads. I cannot see where this regulation would apply to solely used tires in the first place and if we slip down the slope you have put in this thread, this regulation would forbid sales of track-only tires altogether.

Which is just not the case. I am 99% certain one can sell tires, new or used, to any registered motorsport organization, for track-only use. That's the case in first world countries anyway.

> The law you cite literally applies only to general public sales, i.e. where the the intention is to use on public roads.

If you sell key chains to the general public, that implies the key chains are intended only to be used on public roads? I don't think that's right.

> I cannot see where this regulation would apply to solely used tires in the first place and if we slip down the slope you have put in this thread, this regulation would forbid sales of track-only tires altogether.

It forbids the sale if it "has a tread depth of less than 1/16 inch measurable in any groove" which ostensibly wouldn't apply to new tires with more tread than that nor new slicks that come from the factory with no grooves to measure.

But then you're buying a new tire, when what they want is the used one with negligible tread left and therefore a much more attractive price.

No in my locality, angry old karens got together to get the local government to prevent used tyre sales (small fine from memory), and actively damage and break tyres that are being provided to motorsport enthusiasts for free. Actually they were able to create a police task force to damage the tyres for them. They also had a tyre buyback scheme at one point, to make bald tyres unaffordable.

Its a social harassment scheme that has become popular for the local government to buy into and legitimize.

It is already illegal to drive with bald tyres, so the extra regulations and enforcement really only serve to make life difficult for law abiding citizens.

Keep in mind we have 2 local legal motorsport venues that have open track days. And theres a separate police task force that spend their time chasing down our principle hoons, who are public enough that they have an official facebook page and sell illegal car modifications over facebook sales groups.

>Some contries enforce regulations on what tyres are deemed road-legal, due to requirements on safety and minimum grip. It's also why it's illegal to drive around with bald tyres.

Yes, this is a good thing. Where it becomes bad is when someone says "Oh, we should stop that from happening, let's ban the sell of such tires." With no exception.

This isn't a problem unique to regulations and laws. In software development, it is very common for the user to not think about exceptions. The rare the exception, the more likely it is missed in the requirements. It is the same fundamental problem of not thinking about all the exception cases, just in different contexts. You also see this commonly in children learning math. They'll learn and blindly apply a rule, not remembering the exceptions they were told they need to handle (can't divide by zero being a very common one).

A better example might be mattresses. There are states (Kansas) where it is illegal to sell a used mattress, under any circumstances. Even if, for your specific circumstances, the "it's unsanitary" reasoning isn't valid. You, as an individual, cannot sell your "I slept in it a few times and realized I don't like it" mattress to your friend.

Do you have a link to an actual Kansas statute which makes it illegal to sell a used mattress? I searched for it without success. Various sites claim that Kansas makes this illegal without citing a statute (often in the context of hokey stories about people finding silly loopholes in this purported law), but I'm suspicious that it's an urban legend.

I did some digging and, like you note, was unable to find any official documentation for it. Given the number of sites that indicate it is illegal in Kansas (when listing state by state), I took in on faith that it wasn't a mass hallucination. It seems like this may be false.

Thank you for prompting me to look into it further.