Originally Posted by
LarDasse74
Thanks for the detailed study. I see a bit of a hole that needs filling, though... you did not correct for weather, riding conditions, etc. I don't think your results are truly valid unless you had two identical bikes and riders riding through exactly the same debris on exactly the same road every day.
This is why I've always liked physics better than engineering. I prefer to make sweeping assumptions that simplify the calculations and then sort out the details afterward.
As it happens, tire A got all of it's flats in dry conditions while most of the use of tire B has been on wet roads, so if I include that level of analysis things get even worse for tire A. (It's intended as a racing tire, so all of this is to be expected.)
For the curious, in the three years that I've been collecting this data I've gotten 16 flats in about 12000 miles. Of those, 12 occured between April 1 and June 30. Of the 10 flats in 10000 miles that were not on tire A in the example above, 7 happened in the rain. Four of the 10 non-tire-A flats occurred on tires with more than 2000 miles on them. I believe that every one of the 16 occurred in a designated bike lane (though to be fair 75% of my commute is on designated bike lanes). Only three of the 16 were on the front tire.
I could really complicate things by introducing tire C, which got five flats in 2400 miles but 4 of which occurred at over 1880 miles.