WASHINGTON (April 26)—The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should keep "an open mind" about the technology used to inspect the casings of retread tires during testing, according to the Tire Industry Association.
TIA will not support any mandate for any particular method of non-destructive casing examination, the association said in a letter answering NHTSA's request for information before it began the second phase of testing to evaluate the dynamic performance of large truck tires.
The Department of Transportation code of a retread tire should be placed within six inches of the original, new-tire DOT code, TIA said, but otherwise there should be no additional rules for retread tires. "Retread tires have never been the subject of a recall," the association stated in its letter.