This article is part of our continuing Fast Forward series, which examines technological, economic, social and cultural shifts that happen as businesses evolve.

Add one more to the list of “smart” things we’ve come to know in recent years: the smart tire.

For the longest time — more than a century — tires were just rubber doughnuts. In later years, tires got an edge, called a bead, that held it to the wheel’s rim. But conventional tires are not without their flaws. With little if any warning to the driver, tires puncture, rip, skid on water and ice, lose pressure or abruptly go flat in the left lane on the George Washington Bridge. At rush hour. They are anything but smart.

Enter the Pirelli Cyber Tire, a high-tech component stuffed with advanced sensors that can radio information and warnings to an electronic receptor in an automobile’s cockpit. If the car is slipping in a puddle, the tire knows. If traction is being lost, the tire knows. The information can warn the driver to make corrections, or, in some cases, “tell” the car’s control unit to adjust engine speed, traction control or other settings.

The devices are capable of “talking” to a 5G wireless network, allowing them to communicate with drivers in other receiver-equipped vehicles or, for example, a wireless infrastructure at a racetrack.