The Minnesota State Patrol will be using high-tech systems that screen commercial vehicles at weigh stations to identify missing or underinflated tires.

International Road Dynamics will supply 15 of its Tire Anomaly and Classification Systems (TACS) to the Minnesota Department of Transportation under a new contract. They will be added to five existing Virtual Weigh Station sites that are being used by the Minnesota State Patrol for weight enforcement and by the state DOT for traffic data collection.

IRD's Virtual Weigh Station software is a web-based solution for remotely viewing vehicle records, including weights from weigh-in-motion sensors.

Tire Screening While Truck is Moving

The Tire Anomaly and Classification System supports the screening of commercial vehicles at highway and ramp speeds. It consists of the following components:

• In-road sensors for tire detection and measurement.

• Roadside electronics to capture information from the in-road sensors and pass this information to the weigh station.

• Weigh Station Work Station, Software and Graphical User Interface, to present information to weigh station operators.

The TACS will integrate directly with the Virtual Weigh Station interface to display the precise location of unsafe tires on vehicles that cross the TACS sensors. Mobile enforcement teams stationed downstream from the checkpoints will be able to identify trucks with tire anomalies such as flat, missing, or underinflated tires.

Resulting Citations

On the basis of the TACS screening, officers will issue citations to noncompliant vehicles' operators, putting them out of service until the unsafe tire defects are corrected.

"MnDOT's decision to upgrade their Virtual Weigh Station systems with TACS shows how important tire anomaly screening is for the state's efforts to improve commercial vehicle safety," said Rish Malhotra, IRD president and CEO, in a release.

For more on how TACS and IRD's mobile screening systems work: