The traction rating is not accurate especially for budget range tires as it is not regulated.
Traction rating is for wet braking purpose, not pick-up or high-speed performance.

My personal advice for tires, aim for mid range brands (Hankook, Falken, Yokohama, etc) as usually those mid range provide the best value:performance ratio tires.

BTW, there is no rubber tire which can resist to punctures unless you add on inner performance foam. Nowadays a lot of tire shop offer this kind of foam claiming it can reduce noise and also help fill up the puncture to prevent air loss, but disadvantage is tire weight increase and you might felt heavier to accelerate or go higher speed.

This post has been edited by littlefire: Dec 9 2025, 04:27 PM

Goodyear Assurance Maxguard SUV tires has an extra mesh in its construction to give some level of resistance against punctures, aside from its unusually thick threads.

On 2 occasions, the shrapnels didn't manage to puncture the tire that I'm using.

However, the implication of this is that the tire will be heavy af. Goodyear Assurance Maxguard SUV is 3kg heavier than it's counterpart Continental UltraContact UX7 for size 235/50R18.

This post has been edited by amscouzach57: Dec 9 2025, 05:31 PM

They make it thicker by adding more material in between, if the nail or object is long also it will penetrade also.

Another new tire innovation is the air-less type or Non-Pneumatic Tire (NPT) from Michelin/Bridgestone but heard the price is expensive and not many size available for the mass.