I have to replace my tires every 60 000-100 000 KM as the tires wear down and the rubber comes off as I drive. If this is happening with all cars, why arnt the roads coated in rubber? Is somebody cleaning the tire rubber off the road? Is it getting washed away from the rain and into drains/the ocean? How long does it take for rubber to degrade that has come off the tire?
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Over 100000 km, your tyres wear down by, what, 10 mm max? This means that they wear down by 10^-2 / 10^8 = 10^-10 metres per metre travelled.
One metre is about the circumference of your tyre, so you can imagine leaving a one atom thick, one metre wide (each tyre is something like 25 cm wide) layer of rubber behind you as you drive. One lane of road is, say, 5 metres wide, so to reach a one mm thick layer of rubber would need fifty million cars to drive that lane, which is more than one a second for a year. This is more than current cars and drivers are capable of.
Also, think about it: rubber wears off other rubber in the tyre thanks to friction with the road. That same friction is also acting on the rubber on the road, which is much less well stuck in place than when it was part of a tyre.
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