The Texas City tire defect lawyers at Denena & Points note that tire manufacturers have known for decades of the connection between a tire’s age, its susceptibility to heat stress and fatigue, and your chances of having a dangerous tread separation-related rollover accident. Automakers have also been aware of the problem for some time. But the average driver and tire consumer remains unaware of the problem. And the current coding practice for labeling your tire with its date of manufacture doesn’t help much. The week and year of a tire’s manufacture is part of a long code string that can seem obscure.
An image of one of the simpler versions of a tire’s DOT code, including the manufacture date, is pictured here. The last four digits are the week and year of manufacture.
Safety Research and Strategies Inc. points out that some of the most telling research on tire aging came out of studies sponsored by Ford Motor Company. Ford hire materials scientist John Baldwin, formerly a 3M polymer chemist, to help the company analyze and determine the root cause of the widely-publicized spate of fatal tire failure-related Explorer rollovers that occurred 12 years ago. Ford’s sponsorship of the in-depth tire aging research was likely strongly motivated by a desire to blame the Explorer’s Bridgestone-Firestone Wilderness ATX tires for the fatal rollover crashes. Ford did not want the poor stability of the Ford Explorer design to be blamed as the primary culprit in the wrecks (and in the high dollar lawsuits based upon them).
The outrage and media frenzy over the Ford Explorer rollover deaths and their connection to tire failures spawned the TREAD (Transportations Recall Enhancement and Accountability) Act. It’s astonishing the lengths to which lawmakers will go to achieve a strong acronym, isn’t it?
Our Texas City tire defect lawyers remark that the series of fatal Ford Explorer tire-related rollovers also led to a multi-year research program at the NHTSA focusing on tire safety. John Baldwin’s published research on tire aging, undertaken with the sponsorship of Ford, formed part of the foundation for the NHTSA’s tire oven-aging testing methods. The NHTSA has since developed and validated its own artificial tire-aging test.
And automakers and some tire manufacturers have issued technical service bulletins (recalls in essence) warning about the dangers of aged tires. But these isolated actions have had little effect. The lack of a coordinated approach to tire safety in regards to the problem of tire aging means that service technicians still rotate aged, unused spare tires into service, dealers sell used vehicles containing very old tires when the tread depth appears good, and retailers might sell you new tires that were manufactured many years ago.
Our Texas City tire defect lawyers emphasize that a tire ages with the passage of time regardless of the amount of use it receives. Tire aging results from the thermo-oxidative degradation of the internal rubber that bonds the tires belts together. The oxidation process takes place over time, and is accelerated by heat. With age and heat, tire composition materials become less elastic, more brittle, and less capable of preventing crack propagation in the tread. Improper inflation of a tire also increases the effects of age and heat stress.
Residents of the sunny South and Southwest take note: once a tire is placed into service, mechanical forces cause crack propagation beginning at the high-stress internal belt-edge. Our Texas City tire defect lawyers mention that it is critical for you to remove an aged tire from use before the internal cracks expand into a dangerous tread separation.
Sudden tire tread separations can cause you to lose control of your vehicle at a critical moment. Particularly if you are traveling at any speed, the loss of control can cause your vehicle to flip over in a dangerous wreck, resulting in catastrophic or fatal injuries. Our Texas City tire defect lawyers will have more in our next blog on the topic of tire aging, lack of awareness of the problem among the general public, and rubber industry efforts to keep the problem hidden. Stay tuned.