Everyone who heads into the mountains on Interstate 70 should have a good set of tires on their vehicle or chains in the trunk.
Unfortunately, that often isn’t the case. And when the snow inevitably hits, cars with bald tires slide off the highway and tie up the cross-state corridor for hours.
There ought to be a law.
Unfortunately, numbskulls in the state Senate effectively put a sensible tire bill on ice last week, saying the idea needed to be studied more.
What more information could anyone possibly need?
Ice and bald tires are a bad combination. Cars crash. People get hurt. Traffic lurches to a standstill.
In one of the worst tie-ups in I-70 history, 54 vehicles “spun out” in February 2014 as a storm hit and stalled traffic for hours.
Of the 22 cars that CDOT helped during the incident, 19 had bad tires.
And it happens all the time. The Colorado State Patrol says that 60 percent of congestion delays on I-70 are due to crashes. Disruption on the corridor causes an estimated $100 million in lost revenue every year, according to truckers.
Speaking of trucks, state law requires commercial vehicles to have chains from Sept. 1 through May. But not personal vehicles?
House Bill 1173 would have required all motor vehicles — personal and commercial — on I-70 between Morrison and Dotsero to have sufficient traction or tires with acceptable tread depth or carry tire chains from Nov. 1 to May 15. The penalty would be a $100 fine, if those vehicles were stopped or involved in a crash.
In other words: legislation that makes perfect sense.
But some critics worried that it would unfairly target people from out of state. Others confoundedly said the bill would restrict people’s individual freedom and called it nanny governing.
What about the freedoms restricted while being stuck for hours in a traffic jam caused by someone’s bald tires?
Let’s hope common sense prevails next year when the snow starts to fly and lawmakers refile this piece of obvious legislation.
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