US regulators missed tire defect

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Bloomberg News
Jul. 18, 2007 11:17 AM
U.S. regulators missed an early warning of defects that sparked a recall of 442,000 Chinese-made tires, safety advocates said.

Reports filed by the importer, Foreign Tire Sales, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration contained information that was ignored, said Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, a safety advocacy group. The importer reported almost 5,000 warranty claims, about 3,200 of which were safety-related, according to a July 2 filing with the agency.

The nonpublic reports were required by a 2000 federal law, the so-called TREAD Act, passed after deaths were linked to rollovers involving Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tires. The law requires tire makers and importers to inform NHTSA of warranty claims so defects can be spotted before accidents occur.




"The TREAD act gave NHTSA an additional tool to do surveillance to prevent another tragedy like Ford/Firestone," Kane said in an interview. "It isn't working."

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation began hearings today on the safety of Chinese products including federal agency responses to unsafe imports. The committee plans to consider the effectiveness of the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation, or TREAD, Act.

"With 32 million tires flowing into our country from China, consumers should have assurance that a fail-proof system is in place to ensure quality and safety," said Senator Mark Pryor, a Democratic committee member from Arkansas.

The Investigation
In 2000, Firestone's parent, Tokyo-based Bridgestone Corp., voluntarily recalled 6.5 million tires designed for the Explorer. Ford Motor Co. replaced another 10.6 million Firestone tires in 2001, saying it didn't have confidence they were safe.

Ford's position on these tires "remains the same," said company spokeswoman Kristen Kinley. She declined to comment on the Chinese tires. The 2000 recall prompted the TREAD Act.

NHTSA began investigating Chinese tires after Foreign Tire Sales, based in Union, New Jersey, said last month the imports had to be recalled and informed the agency of two deaths in a rollover accident involving the tires.

The company began reporting to NHTSA in 2005 that it had an increase in Chinese-tire claims, company attorney Lawrence Lavigne said. "NHTSA has had that data, and it didn't bother them," he said.

There was nothing in the tire company's reports to spur an investigation, NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason said. "A large number of warranty claims would trigger suspicions over here," Nason said. "As I recall there were only a handful of warranty claims in their early-warning reporting."




Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0718biz-tirerecall18-ON.html