Size matters

One of the best ways to improve your car’s gas mileage is by making sure the tires are properly inflated. Newer cars even have dashboard warning lights that tell you if one of your quartet is low.

That’s nice. But have you ever wondered why tire manufacturers make it hard to find the one piece of information on a tire that you care about?

I am referring, of course, to the number of pounds per square inch that your tire should be inflated to, such as “42 psi.”

Most tires have a bunch of things written on the side, from company stuff to product numbers. When you want to inflate a tire, the only thing you want to know is the psi number.

It’s there, of course — somewhere. It’s just written in the same tiny type as the rest of the gibberish, and that makes it hard to find.

Maybe you’re one of those car owners who knows his psi number or remembers it when he needs to know it. Good for you.

Lots of us, however, don’t carry that number around in our heads.

When we’re at the gas station or convenience store, squatting down, maybe in the hot sun or drizzling rain, all we want to find is the psi number so we know much air the low tire needs.

So here’s my solution, and you have to wonder why this hasn’t been done before: Why not put the psi number in big type, such as letters a half-inch high, so that people can actually see it when they need to?

I'm talking "blah-blah-blah 42 psi blah-blah-blah ... "

Maybe there are some tires like that now, but I haven’t seen them.

If I was head bureaucrat at the U.S. Department of New Rules, I’d make that mandatory for all tires manufactured after tomorrow.

It might save enough gas nationwide to get the price below $3 a gallon … for a few days.