Guess what’s killing car tires everywhere

I didn’t think much of my flat tire, until there were 37 cars ahead of me in line at Ballard tire shop all with flats. We all had a strange hook of metal embedded in our tires.

There are thousands of these hooks on well-traveled streets in downtown Seattle and around the region. Guess what they are?

Broken pieces of snow chains. They’re small and you can’t even see them when you’re driving over them. Pick up one of those hooks the wrong way and ssssss, you’ll get a slow-leaking flat too. Be careful driving around in our post-snow-and-ice conditions.

97.3 KIRO FM Reporter Josh Kerns looked into these little tire-shredding-broken-chain-links. Read his story here.