The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is looking to make traveling on Interstate 81 safer with its new commercial vehicle tire technology.
Tire Anomaly and Classification System, which was installed along I-81 near Winchester in June 2020, allows weigh station technicians to detect if a person is driving in a commercial vehicle with flat, missing, mismatched or underinflated tires. With this technology, a technician can then alert the driver and call them into the station to arrange a repair, preventing a possible crash.
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In one year alone, the DMV was able to remove 13,000 unsafe tires using the system, which uses innovative in-road sensors. An average of nearly 1,200 unsafe tires are identified each month.
This year, the TACS technology, produced by International Road Dynamics Inc., is coming to the Troutville Motor Carrier Service Center on I-81 near Roanoke.
“Tire blowouts can cause serious crashes. By detecting unsafe tires, most times before a truck driver even knows there is a problem, we can prevent crashes from occurring and save lives,” said DMV Commissioner Richard D. Holcomb, the Governor’s Highway Safety Representative. “The hard-working folks at DMV’s motor carrier service centers take very seriously the role they play in keeping our highways safe; TACS gives them another tool with which to work.”
