Click the play button on the video window to the right to see the storySearch school bus safety inspection records below. Also see how to determine the age of your tires.Children rely on them, and parents expect they're safe, but an ABC15 investigation raises serious safety concerns involving school bus tires all across the Valley.
Bus by bus, we looked at tires at districts from east to west.
In the Phoenix Union High School District, Tempe Union High School District, and Pendergast Elementary School District, we found tires with chunks of missing rubber, huge gashes, even signs of separation - where the tread is literally starting to come off.
We looked at tires at six Valley school districts and had no problem finding more than 50 tires with obvious signs of damage.
The state of Arizona requires annual inspections, but the Department of Public Safety only has five inspectors to cover the entire state and its more than 8,000 school buses.
"If it's not within standard, the bus is placed out of service," DPS Officer Jim Daugherty said.
The ABC15 Investigators poured through more than 16,000 records, inspections that show more than 220 school buses were pulled off the road in the last two years alone for major violations involving damaged tires like the ones we found on buses Valleywide.
State Representative Mark Anderson is the chairman of the House Education Committee.
Shocked by the results of our investigation, he said, "Somewhere our system, if you will, for ensuring safety on the school buses is not working."
In addition to worn tires, we found old tires - seven, eight, even nine years old.
At Pendergast, a mechanic told us tires were changed "about once or twice a year," but we found plenty of tires manfactured in 2001.
At the Cartwright Elementary School District, the transportation director told us bus number 42, with at least one tire from 2001, "is one that we don't use," but we saw it out on the road transporting students.
The district later said that bus passed its last inspection and is scheduled to be replaced.
Some of the damage is obvious, but there's another concern that's not.
"Tire age is one of those issues that's completely under the radar screen for the average Joe," tire expert Sean Kane with Safety Research & Strategies, a private auto safety firm that consults with the federal government.
"It's particularly added risk in a hot weather climate," Kane said.
It's a risk so great that a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows tires dramatically degrade in the heat.
The study, conducted right here in Phoenix, focused on passenger car tires.
To date, there is no study addressing tires like the ones we found on Valley school buses.
The state's Minimum Standards for School Buses and School Bus Drivers is more than 120 pages long, a bumper-to-bumper blue print outlining every type of violation.
If there's any damage to a tire, that's a major violation that Officer Daughtery said would take the bus out of service, but the state's minimum standards do not address the age of a tire.
That does not sit well with Rep. Anderson.
When it comes to the safety of students, he said it's obvious their lives are being put at risk.
"Somebody is not doing their job," Anderson said.
Several of the school districts involved have refused our repeated requests for an on-camera interview.
The Phoenix Union High School District said its tires exceed the standards set by the state.
But Rep. Anderson said those standards are not enough.
He's willing to consider legislation putting a restriction on the age of tires.
