ABC points out that the tire industry trade group, which it erroneously calls the "Rubber Manufacturers of America,” says the six-year limit is “an arbitrary date” not supported by facts, and that the group “has hired lobbyists to defeat laws that would require mandatory inspection of tire age.”
“We oppose legislation that have some sort of age limit on tires,” said Dan Zielinski, Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) senior vice president of communications, who was interviewed for the story.
In a most recent case, ABC said, the RMA “spent $36,000 on lobbyists to defeat proposed legislation in the state of Massachusetts that would have included the age of tires on regular vehicle inspections, according to ABC News' Boston affiliate WCVB, which joined other top ABC News affiliate investigative teams around the country in a national hidden camera investigation into tire safety.”
Mr. Zielinski is quoted as telling ABC, “It's more important how a tire is used, whether it's maintained and how it's stored.”
However, the news organization said “even one tire company, Michelin, cautions that aged tires could be a problem, urging motorists to replace tires over 10 years old.”
Safety experts say a tire can age and degrade under certain conditions, ABC says in its website story, “even if it has not spent any time on the road.” Mr. Kane, of SRS, added that “over time, (tires) become less elastic” and “once it's put into service it represents a significant hazard.”
The story also advises consumers how to determine the age of a tire, though ABC says it “can be a daunting task. The date of production can be found in a unique code at the end of 11- or 12-digit identification number on the tire's sidewall.”
Tire age degradation, the ABC story continues, “is part of a first-of-its-kind special investigation launched by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into the hundreds of deaths each year from ‘tire-initiated events.'”
It quotes Don Karol, the NTSB investigator leading the agency's initiative, who says tire aging “does potentially play a role in the degradation of the internal structure of the tire,” and adds: “It's definitely a significant issue.”
The ABC story also says that NTSB investigators are focusing “on a recent accident in Louisiana in which a 10-year-old tire on a sports utility vehicle lost its tread and the driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a bus carrying a high school baseball team.
“Though everyone on the school bus survived, the February crash killed four of five people in the SUV.”