The Tire Industry Association is calling for “meaningful” tire recall and recovery reform. TIA, together with the Safety Institute and Families for Safer Recalls, is asking Congress and the NHTSA to support reform that requires uniform electronic scan-ability of tires to increase recall success.
On July 15, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation passed a multi-year transportation bill that included a provision to re-establish mandatory tire registration by dealers. This provision came from RMA-backed Tire Efficiency, Safety and Registration Act (TESR Act) introduced to the Senate on July 9.
Now, TIA is looking to alter the mandatory tire registration reform. TIA was openly against the RMA-backed legislation, and issued a response saying: “The Tire Industry Association (TIA) is going to do everything in its power to defeat legislation aimed at making tire registration mandatory.”
“Tire dealers aren’t objecting to tire registration,” TIA executive vice president Roy Littlefield said. “The problem is that the latest proposals put all of the burden on dealers and provide no realistic methods for service providers to do the job efficiently. In order for any tire recall and recovery system to work, we must automate tire registration and the retrieval of the TIN. The proposed legislation is centered on improving registration rates when the real focus should be to improve the recovery rate of recalled tires. At the end of the day, the only way that consumers are going to benefit is when recalled tires can be identified electronically.”
Currently, consumers or tire service professionals manually transmit the Tire Identification Number (TIN) used to identify recalled tires to manufacturers. The TESR Act does not change this system.
In the event of a recall, the organizations said there are no tools “that can quickly, easily and accurately determine whether tires are part of a recall so they can be recovered.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the system’s adequacy and creating recommendations based on crashes caused by the failure of recalled defective tires, while legislators continue to push the RMA-backed legislation.
