The government's chief auto safety official and the Bush administration's regulatory overseer have agreed to disagree over a federal rule that would require tire pressure monitors on the dashboards of all new cars.

To ward off further delay on a rule that Congress required last year after the Firestone tire recall, the two federal officials said yesterday that they have agreed to allow automakers to initially choose between two competing tire-pressure monitoring systems while more studies are conducted to determine which system should be mandated for cars made five years from now.

The agreement means the tire pressure rule should be issued formally within the next two weeks. John D. Graham, the Office of Management and Budget's administrator for regulatory affairs, delayed the rule last month because he preferred a less-expensive approach than the one proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

NHTSA had proposed a direct-monitoring system in which the pressure of all four tires would be observed and the motorist would be alerted by a light on the dashboard if any fell below the recommended level. Graham, however, argued for an indirect monitoring system that would work off the antilock braking system. Under this method -- also preferred by automakers -- the ABS would measure the rotation of all four tires; if the speed of any one was substantially different than the others, the motorist would be alerted. Although this system would not alert motorists if all four tires were equally underinflated, Graham argued that it would lead to greater overall auto safety because it would encourage greater use of ABS, which could lead to fewer accidents.

"The direct system does have more accuracy and information than the existing indirect system," Graham admitted in a congressional hearing yesterday. However, he said, the current ABS technology "is not a fixed constant. There are efforts to improve it. . . . We don't need to decide today" what should be in 2007 model cars.

Graham's comments were met with some skepticism, particularly by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who was the chief sponsor of the tire-pressure monitoring provision. Calling himself a "technological agnostic," Markey said, "We cannot delay waiting for technology to arrive that may never arrive."

The hearing by a House energy and commerce subcommittee was held to review the implementation of a new tire safety law Congress passed after certain Firestone tires were linked to accidents causing 271 deaths and more than 700 injuries.

The law requires NHTSA to issue 15 new rules, three of which have been completed.

Committee members said they were concerned not only that NHTSA would not meet its congressional deadlines to issue these rules but also that the new rules would flood NHTSA with so much new data that it would be unable to analyze it quickly enough to act on possible safety hazards. If the law is not "implemented properly and enforced rigorously, our efforts would have been in vain," said the subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Clifford B. Stearns (R-Fla.).