NHTSA is rewriting the tire safety rules and writing the first ones for airless tires

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced on October 26, 2026 that it is overhauling the federal tire safety standards for the first time in more than 20 years, and that the rewrite will reach a category the current rules were never built for: airless, puncture-proof tires. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy will appoint the panel that negotiates the new text, and the public docket is already open.

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NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison put the rationale in one sentence: that the regulatory framework must keep pace as American tire technology and vehicle design evolve. He added that bringing industry stakeholders and safety experts into the process would help update outdated standards, improve safety and lower costs.

Airless tires enter the rulebook for the first time

In its announcement of the tire rulemaking, NHTSA says it plans to set safety rules for new designs such as airless (puncture-proof) tires. The main passenger-car and light-truck tire standard, FMVSS No. 139, states in its own scope that it applies to “new pneumatic radial tires” on vehicles rated at 10,000 pounds gross weight or less. A tire with no air inside is outside that wording before any test is run.

The mismatch runs deeper than a definition. Several of the pass-fail tests in the standard are built around inflation. After the endurance run, the tire must retain at least 95 percent of its starting pressure, and a separate low-inflation test runs a deliberately deflated tire for 90 minutes at 120 km/h and full load. A structure that carries load through its own spokes or webbing has no pressure to hold and no deflated state to test, so the agency has to decide what an equivalent measure of durability looks like. The announcement offers no draft criteria; it states the intent and leaves the engineering to the committee.

Strength, endurance and the other tests on the table

For tires that do contain air, NHTSA says it will update the tests for tire strength, rim resistance and endurance so that they match current road conditions and modern tire technology. The endurance procedure in FMVSS No. 139 dates from an earlier tire era: it runs the tire at not less than 120 km/h through three periods, four hours at 85 percent of rated load, six hours at 90 percent and 24 hours at 100 percent, and the tire must finish with no visible separations, chunking, cracking or broken cords.

Strength and bead-unseating requirements are not written into that standard directly. The same text hands passenger-car tires to the older FMVSS No. 109 and light-truck tires to FMVSS No. 119, which means a rewrite of strength testing touches more than one regulation. The release also says the agency will review weight-limit guidelines for trucks and SUVs and modernize sidewall markings, the coded information molded into every tire that today includes load ratings and, on winter tires, the Alpine symbol. The release does not say which markings would change or what a modernized sidewall would show.

The high-speed test is a second place where the written procedure assumes a conventional tire. FMVSS No. 139 runs a tire for 90 minutes at 85 percent load in three 30-minute stages at 140, 150 and 160 km/h. The standard also carves out several products: special trailer tires in highway service, farm-implement tires with intermittent highway use, tires with rim diameters of 12 inches or less, and temporary spares. Whether a new airless category slots into the existing test matrix or gets its own section is among the questions the committee will have to settle, and the announcement does not preview an answer.

An 18-seat committee and a 30-day comment clock

NHTSA is using negotiated rulemaking, a process in which the affected parties sit at one table and try to reach consensus on proposed text before the agency publishes it. Duffy will appoint up to 18 stakeholders drawn from tire manufacturers, automakers, safety organizations, research institutions and engineering associations. Applications for membership go to [email protected].

Public comments go to Docket No. NHTSA-2026-1717 on regulations.gov. Both comments and membership applications are due no later than 30 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. The announcement carries no publication date and links to no Federal Register notice, and none could be located when this article was prepared, so the actual deadline is not yet a calendar date.

Other lamp, tire-placard and vehicle rules moving the same month

The tire effort is one of several NHTSA proceedings that adjust long-standing standards to modern vehicles. A proposed rule published in the Federal Register on April 1, 2026 under docket NHTSA-2026-0630 would amend FMVSS No. 110, the tire selection and rim standard, so that vehicles without a driver’s side can place the tire information placard on the left; NHTSA asked for comment by May 1, 2026. Morrison also signed a separate proposal to modernize FMVSS No. 108, the lighting standard, on October 22, under docket NHTSA-2026-1519.

Both are narrower than a full rewrite of the tire standards. The placard change moves a label; the lighting proposal, which covers headlamp test voltage and marker lamps for vehicles built without manual driving controls, does not touch rubber at all. The announced tire rulemaking is the one that covers testing, markings and a new class of product at once, and it is the only one of the three that NHTSA is handing to a negotiating committee rather than drafting internally and putting out for comment.

Nothing in it is final. The first measurable step is the Federal Register notice for docket NHTSA-2026-1717, which starts the 30-day clock, and the second is the committee roster, which the announcement leaves for Duffy to fill.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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