In his weekly legislative update to members, Roy Littlefield, executive vice president of TIA, clarified TIA’s position on the introduction of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2014. Bills introduced in both the and Senate seek to pull away the curtain and give consumers direct access to TREAD Act safety filings by both tiremakers and automakers.

Below is Littlefield’s statement:

“A recent ABC News expose discussed the problems associated with voluntary tire registration and tire recalls. As part of the effort in the early 1980s to move from a mandatory tire registration program to a voluntary tire registration program, I am sensitive to the fact that NHTSA is under pressure to get the registration rates up. We do not want to return to a mandatory system.

“The TIA Board of Directors saw the Motor Vehicle Safety Act as a possible vehicle to tell Congress what we as an association and as an industry are doing to increase public awareness in this area; and to express to Congress our frustration with NHTSA that the tire consumer education program required by law in the Energy Act of 2007 has stalled in the bureaucracy. Increasing public awareness of the voluntary tire regulation system should be a piece of the consumer awareness program dictated by the 2007 Energy Act.

“TIA wants to come out in support of public transparency for voluntary tire registration and recalls; wants to work to raise the level of tire registration; and wants to make the case to Congress that this effort belongs in the Consumer Education program that is already a signed law.

“There are parts of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act that puts unfair and unrealistic burdens on the tire manufacturers; and on those sections of the bills TIA will stand united with the tire manufacturers and with other industry associations in opposition to the bills as introduced.”