New tire testing technology appears in Minnesota

Minnesota’s weigh stations will use modern commercial vehicle inspection systems to detect tire problems.

International Road Dynamics has deployed 15 Tire Anomaly Detection and Classification Systems (TACS) to the Minnesota Department of Transportation under a new contract. The software allows for virtual viewing of vehicle records, as well as information received from weigh-in-motion sensors.

The system consists of the following components:

• Roadside electronics for collecting information from road sensors and transmitting this information to the weighing station.

• Road sensors for detecting and measuring tires.

• Weighing workstation, software and graphical user interface for providing information to weighing station operators.

Based on this inspection, law enforcement will identify vehicles with defective tires and take them out of service.