Texas has no studded tire season and no stud-type rule

Chapter 547 of the Transportation Code is the vehicle equipment chapter, and Section 547.612 is its only tire provision. Read the section list for the chapter and there is no companion section imposing a winter window, an axle rule, a stud count or a projection measurement. That absence is the answer for most drivers: unlike the northern states that open a studded tire season on a fixed date and close it in spring, Texas legislated the subject once, in general terms, in the 1995 recodification enacted by the 74th Legislature, and has not revisited it since.

Section 547.612(c) names studs directly, which is why it governs. It prohibits a tire on a moving vehicle from carrying "a block, stud, flange, cleat, or spike or other protuberance of a material other than rubber that projects beyond the tread of the traction surface," and then gives two escapes. The first is that the protuberance does not injure the highway. That is the standard commercially sold studded snow tires are measured against, and it is a condition on the tire itself rather than on the season or the weather. The second escape is narrower and more specific: a tire chain of reasonable proportion that is used as required for safety because of a condition that might cause the vehicle to skid. Chains are therefore lawful in a Texas ice storm without any argument about highway injury, provided they are proportionate and the conditions actually warrant them.

The rest of the section covers older and heavier equipment. Section 547.612(a) requires a solid rubber tire to have rubber on the traction surface extending above the edge of the flange of the periphery. Section 547.612(b) bans operating or moving a motor vehicle, trailer or semitrailer with a metal tire in contact with the roadway, with a single exception for a farm wagon or farm trailer of less than 5,000 pounds gross weight whose owner is transporting farm products to market, for processing, or from farm to farm. Section 547.612(d) lets the Texas Transportation Commission, and a local authority within its own jurisdiction, issue a special permit authorising operation of a tractor or traction engine with movable tracks bearing transverse corrugations, or a farm tractor or other farm machinery. Section 547.612(e) is unrelated to studs and creates a sales offense: offering for sale or selling a regrooved private passenger automobile tire is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than $500 or more than $2,000.

Two scope limits are worth knowing before applying any of this. Section 547.002 removes several vehicle types from Chapter 547 entirely unless a provision is specifically made applicable, including an implement of husbandry, road machinery, a road roller, a farm tractor, a bicycle, an electric bicycle, a golf cart, a neighborhood electric vehicle and an off-highway vehicle. Tire rules in Section 547.612 therefore do not reach a golf cart or a neighborhood electric vehicle at all. And Section 542.001 provides that a rule of the road applies only to operation on a highway unless the provision says otherwise, so studs on a vehicle used on private land are outside the section.

Separately from stud legality, Texas does police tire condition through the annual inspection administered by the Department of Public Safety. The DPS inspection criteria reject a steering axle tire that "has less than 4/32-inch tread when measured at any point on a major tread groove" and any other tire that "has less than 2/32-inch tread when measured at any point on a major tread groove," along with tires showing exposed ply or belt material, tread or sidewall separation, or a cut exposing ply or belt material. A studded winter tire is inspected on the same criteria as any other tire.

004(a)(3) makes a misdemeanor for the person who operates or moves it, or for an owner who knowingly permits another to do so. 401 applies: a fine of not less than $1 or more than $200. 004(d) withholds that dismissal route from offenses involving a commercial motor vehicle. Enforcement is by any peace officer, with the Texas Department of Public Safety handling most highway stops outside city limits. 612(e), a seller who offers or sells a regrooved private passenger automobile tire commits a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than $500 or more than $2,000.