TIA, SRS share opposing views on NHTSA tire aging

WASHINGTON—The Tire Industry Association joined the Rubber Industry Association in hailing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's decision not to seek rulemaking on tire aging.

However, safety watchdog group Safety Research & Strategies Inc. said the NHTSA research was misguided and that new tire date-of-manufacture labels, not new tests, are really what is needed.

In a July 11 conference call, Dan Zielinski, RMA senior vice president of public affairs, praised a NHTSA report that said that tire improvements created by new safety and tire pressure monitoring standards made a tire aging test unnecessary.

Consumer education about how to avoid the effects of tire aging is the path NHTSA will take instead, the agency said.

TIA, which along with the RMA has battled tire aging legislation in Maryland and other states, praised the NHTSA decision.

“We've been consistent in our message that NHTSA should be the only government agency to determine if legislation was necessary to establish a safety standard regarding the age of a tire,” said Roy Littlefield, TIA executive vice president. “Hopefully this will put an end to individual states attempting to pass their own regulations that arbitrarily place a limit on the safe service life of a tire.”

But Sean Kane, president of Rehoboth, Mass.-based SRS, said it doesn't regard tire aging tests as the solution to the problem of tires that fail in service because of age-related degradation.

“We've been asking NHTSA for tire aging rules since 2004, and we've never asked for testing—never,” Kane said. “All we asked for were non-coded dates of manufacture so consumers could understand them and consumer and dealer education so people would know where to look for the information.”

For the lack of this information, many motorists have died because of dangerously aged tires that looked sound to the naked eye, according to Kane.