Filling your tires with nitrogen is totally passe. Everyone knows all the cool kids now use argon. Imagine the embarrassment of being seen flying in an aircraft that had tires filled with a low molar mass inert gas like nitrogen? Aircraft tire inflation gas diffusion losses are totally lame.

I've even heard recent rumors of a couple more progressive members of the underground aircraft tire culture experimenting with using xenon and krypton gas for inflation. What makes it especially cool is that they produce their own gas supply by distilling the earth's air, so it's totally carbon neutral and socially responsible! :cool:

Barit1 has it - look up his post.

The issue is that if you have air at 10-20 atmospheres then the partial pressure of oxygen will be equivalent of 2-4 atmospheres. Things tend to burn very well in high pressure oxygen, and will start to ignite at a lower temperature. Plainly a tyre filled with oxygen is the equivalent of a small bomb. The question then being, what causes it to go off?

I'll confess I'm not sure of the answer to that, but I guess you could get a static spark / spontaneous combustion of hot volatile compounds..?