Run-flat tires do have their advantages (and fans)

Consumer Reports News: December 05, 2007 02:11 PM

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We received many responses to our story on the pros and cons of run-flat tires.

People often indicated that we'd missed the mark and that, in their opinion, the safety benefits of run-flat tires certainly did not outweigh the problems. Our reader/subscriber letters agreed that run-flats have issues:

Difficult to find replacements in certain areas
Limited number of replacement models
Inability to repair run-flats
High replacement costs

Some even said that these issues were greater concerns than most were willing to live with -- even with extended the mobility run-flats offer. However, after suffering a flat this past Thanksgiving eve, I'm still convinced that run-flats do, indeed, offer a safety benefit.

Let me explain.

Much of the pre-Thanksgiving traffic was in full swing, as many businesses closed on time (if not early) to allow their employees to get home early. I'd signed out our Sienna AWD minivan (equipped with run-flat tires) for the long holiday weekend to travel to Vermont with my family and to add miles to the tires for our ongoing long-term wear evaluation. I picked up my children from daycare—two kids ages three and eight—and put them in their child seats. The van was also full of all the stuff I needed for the weekend: cocktail party supplies; a movie screen for entertaining the children during the party; folding chairs that I borrowed for additional seating on Thanksgiving and for the party; and a mix of food and beverages... You get the picture.

As we're traveling on a rural—and particularly narrow—Connecticut road, we came up over a knoll to find an approaching pickup towing a trailer and taking a bit more than its fair share of the road. I'm somewhat forced to go a bit farther to the shoulder than I normally drive and end up hitting something (I'm not sure if it was simply a pothole or a rock) rather hard. I hadn't gone fifty yards when the Sienna's tire-pressure monitoring system lights up—I knew I had a flat.

Well, let me just tell you if I had been driving on standard, non-run-flat tires and needed to make a tire change, I'm fairly sure that I would not have been able to do it safely in the location I was in without putting my children, myself, and the Sienna in serious danger. You see, the same knoll that prevented the approaching pickup from seeing me would have prevented anyone from seeing my tire-flattened Sienna as well. Thinking back, I'm fairly sure I would have sacrificed the wheel and would have simply driven on the flat tire until I could have gotten out of that location.

But...as luck would have it, I quickly and almost joyously remembered: THE SIENNA HAS RUN-FLATS! Not only would I be able to safely drive myself and my family home (albeit a bit slower), I wouldn't be standing in the middle of the road unloading my children, food, drinks, movie screen, and chairs in order to change a tire.

A day later I drove—carefully, mind you—on that same tire without any pressure in it to a location where I could get the flat changed.

Admittedly, before this all happened, I could have only envisioned a variety of scenarios where run-flats would have been beneficial in the event of a flat -- a busy highway, an uneven shoulder where jacking a car could be dangerous, or in very poor or cold weather. Little did I realize they'd be my saving grace on such a dark Thanksgiving eve with kids and a load of stuff on a narrow country road in Connecticut.

—Jennifer Stockburger

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