Those are not the root streets - those are highways..
Note all those streets in light yellow on the google map for the same area: http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&...0675&z=13&om=0
for example, there is nothing in tiger data to distinguish those streets from the "regular" streets..
Looking at the street extention (Pky, Blvd, etc) in order to "upgrade" some streets helps a bit.. but not much...
So, I think the best solution is cross checking against googe map colors:
1) Find the center coordinates of the line in question (every line in the set, actually)
2)FInd the corresponding pixel on google map tile and check the color, to deside on whether to upgrade the street status from 41 to,say 39..