Obama Publishes Tyre Wear Data

A year after the Obama administration issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (21 January 2009), the White House has begun publishing complete datasets from a range of government departments including its Uniform Tire Quality Grading System (UTQGS) database.

According to the data.gov website, “NHTSA has rated more than 4,200 lines of tyres, including most used on passenger cars, minivans, SUVs and light pickup trucks…UTQGS allows consumers to compare tyre tread wear, traction performance and temperature resistance.”

One of the stipulations of the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government was that requested data would have to be published online. As a result readers can access the data abstract page here http://www.data.gov/details/1353/ratings_received and the XML data sets themselves here http://ogd.nhtsa.gov/UTQG/UTQG.xml. Less technical users can browse the same information in a more easily digestible form here http://www.safercar.gov/portal/