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Don't let your tires get old, don't let the wear bars show on the tread, don't let them develop bad wear patterns and keep them happy at good air pressure. If you check your tires before every ride, you'll do aiight.

Hey Fargo360 ... they missed dodo. And maybe poop too.

I have had one front tire blow and several back tires. All were in decent shape at the time. The front let go in a downhill corner doing about 70mph. It stood up in front of an oncoming motorhome. I could see his eyes were bigger than my headlight but he never backed off. I just "horsed" it over to my lane again and off to the side. There had been a foldin the new tube when installed.
Another time I was coming through a town after a 500 mile day. When I went to change lanes the bike suddenly swapped ends. I was looking right through a pick ups passenger window. It swapped ends again and left the road into a parking lot like I had meant to do it. It had picked up a packing staple.
Tubes let go quick! Keep er rubber down! Sam.

The consensus is: 90% of tire failures occur during the last 10% of tread life.

Amdonim wrote:The manual for the bike will tell you when it's time to replace your tires, usually by giving a minimum amount of tread left on the tire. Like most things, the manual is written by the people who made the machine, so you should probably abide by it.

Actually, it is better to use tread depth guidelines that the TIRE manufacturer provides. As well as inflation preferences. Each tire manufacturer has slightly different tread-depth indicator parameters for optimal performance and safety. Make sure you understand how much tread is safe, and how to tell, before riding.

P

Had a rear tire go on my Road King Classic this summer while doing about 75mph. Tire was not that old, but I hit something sharp in the road at night and away she went. Losing a rear tire is not near as bad as losing a front, but it was hairy and I'm glad my wife was not with me that night as little as she is. As mentioned earlier, stay off the brakes, roll off the throttle and shift your weight as much as possible away from the tire you lost. Although that can be tricky, because my first sign of a problem was violent shaking in the handlebars, so I initially thought I lost the front one. Tire life is incredibly variable based on how you ride how big you are and how big your bike is. I

I had a rear blowout going about 50mph and was fortunate to keep it under control to the shoulder. Many have said that you don't use your brakes but the truth is that you can softly apply the brake opposite the blowout (i.e.-front brake for a rear blowout and vice versa). It's hard to think that fast when it happens though. Reflexes take over. Many gave good advise and I will concur that it is best not to let your tires get that worn. I understand trying to get your monies worth but what's the point if you have $1,000's of dollars in hospital bills? Spend the money and keep fresh rubber.

I had a rear tire blow out on my Norton chopper years ago at 75 mph as I was passing a car, I wound up doing lock to lock slides until I wound up in the opposite ditch still alright, a frightening experience, I read a report done by the California hwy patrol that said that 80% of their tire failures were on the rear tire and that was because the front tire would freewheel over a object such as a nail and stand it up and the rear tire would run right into it so they put rubber mud guards on the front fender that reached to the ground that would brush the objects out of the way and their rear tire blowouts diminished by a huge amount, I presume close to 80%, I put a rubber mudgaurd on my Eldorado and never had a flat tire again, now however with the high fenders on modern bikes I can't see doing that, but with modern tubless tires the catastrophic tire failures you get with tube tires don't seem to happen as often