If you experience a shudder in the steering wheel while driving, or you notice overall swaying and shaking, there’s a good chance you might have a tire imbalance. Simply put, imbalances can happen when the distribution of mass of the tire and wheel assembly is uneven. This can be a common situation for two reasons. First, despite how they look, wheels and tires aren’t perfectly round. Second, when wheels and tires are put together, their center of gravity usually doesn’t match the assembly center. The unevenness is what causes those vibrations.