A measure recently passed by the California General Assembly requiring customers to be advised of a purchased tire’s date-of-manufacture is being assailed by the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA). The organization derides Assembly Bill 496 as “inconsistent, contradictory and fear-mongering,” saying that it would only increase the likelihood of more lawsuits being filed against tire dealers.
Following its May 28 passage by a 41-28 vote, AB 496 is currently pending before the state senate’s rules committee.
Consumer safety advocates contend that older tires, even those sold as “new,” are subject to unseen internal degradation that can create a hazard for motorists and their passengers, and that point-of-sale notification is necessary to prevent aging tires from being placed into service.
“Proponents of this bill use fear-mongering to allege that tires reaching a certain chronological age are dangerous,” says Dan Zielinski, the RMA’s senior vice president of public affairs. “But the bill is inconsistent in its application. Any consumer who buys tires or a vehicle in a private transaction, or who buys a new or used vehicle from a dealer, or who buys replacement tires from an auto dealer would not receive a notification under this proposal. These exemptions make the measure contradictory on its face and are implicit acknowledgement that chronological tire age alone is not a hazard,” he notes.
“It’s only going to apply to tire dealers and service stations,” Zielinski says. “They’re exempting millions of tires from this bill.”
According to Assembly Member Mike Davis, AB 496’s author, “The issue of tire age degradation was first addressed in the U.S. in response to the Ford-Firestone tire debacle. Experts concluded that age degradation played a role in the catastrophic failure of these tires, and a growing number of tire manufacturers and automakers issued tire age replacement guidelines for the U.S. market.”
Davis points out that “most vehicle manufacturers now recommend the replacement of tire tires after six years of age, regardless of tread depth. Warnings about the hazards associated with tire age degradation date back to the early 1990s, but these warnings are often buried in vehicle owner’s manuals or in bulletins issued by tire makers to their dealers.”
He goes on to cite the 2007 Report to Congress on Tire Aging from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), saying that “insurance data show that California is one of five states in which most tire failure claims originate, and 84 percent of the those claims are for tires over six years old.”
“That data is extremely questionable,” Zielinski replies. “That’s one small snippet of the actual data,” which he maintains is incomplete. “That information in the report is not transparent.”
He goes on to stress how “allegations that there is a correlation between tire performance and chronological tire age are unfounded and unsupported by data. No auto industry, tire industry or NHTSA data has determined that a tire cannot perform when it reaches a particular chronological age.”
Information provided by the RMA to NHTSA shows that chronological tire age is not a factor in tire performance, Zielinski says. A study by the association covering 14,000 scrap tires did not reveal any indication that tires are removed from service once they reach a certain chronological age. A second comprehensive study of all claims made by consumers to tire manufacturers over a six-year period showed that the rate of claims as a function of the chronological age of tires actually decreases after six years.
“Providing a simple, understandable notification to consumers about a tire’s date of manufacture is reasonable,” notes Zielinski. “But the bill provides several options that would likely lead to trial lawyers’ accusations that a dealer didn’t provide the most appropriate notification. This would force nearly all notifications to be given prior to the point (time) of sale, which will result in needless service delays.”
In an earlier letter of opposition to Davis, the RMA said that prior-to-sale notification “would be impractical and burdensome,” Zielinski reports. “Although several auto and tire manufacturers have issued recommendations for tire replacement after a number of years, none are derived from technical data that suggests a tire would not perform after such time,” he says.
“AB 496 would only benefit trial lawyers by creating a new roadmap to sue California tire dealers,” Zielinski says. “The measure makes inaccurate statements about tire performance and imposes new burdens on tire retailers in a particularly unfortunate economic climate.”
For more information, visit www.rma.org, www.safetyresearch.net and www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html.
