We kinda let the 10th anniversary of the Ford-Firestone tire fiasco pass without mention. Our "forgetting" was intentional. It was last August, in case you forgot.
But as the 10th annual National Tire Safety Week recently came and went, it might be interesting to look at all of the fine things that incident brought to our industry.
Things like NTSW, for example, still the only national industry-wide consumer tire care education effort.
For a brief period after the fiasco, tire manufacturers and brands had easy-to-spot tire care sections on their websites. Now they are not so easy to find.
Ten years ago we were all fired up about the need to better educate consumers about tires, tire technology and tire care/maintenance. So much of the hysteria surrounding the Ford-Firestone event was the direct result of tire ignorance, we all thought creating tire-smart drivers was important. None of it went anywhere.
There was talk of a massive national campaign, funded by a check-off type program. That went nowhere, buried by weight of disagreement and disengagement between the RMA and TIA.
We did get the TREAD Act, which was all about hammering the tire industry and nothing about fixing vehicle design and engineering problems tires were expected to cure.
The TREAD Act gave us all new tire testing and safety standards and the hardly stringent TPMS mandate that impacted no one except the tire retailer, who had nothing to do with faulty SUVs and their tires. Dealers had to learn and relearn all-new (and wholly inconsistent) technology and bear the brunt of complaining consumers, not the mention the costs for specialized tools and sensor inventories.
What did the TPMS regs mean to tiremakers? Nothing. Car companies? Just another part to procure. Consumers? Well, here’s the worse sin, because under NHTSA’s TPMS regs a tire can run 24% underinflated for weeks or months without a peep from the system. That means a tire requiring 30 psi (according to the automaker) can “safely” run at 22.8 psi! But once that tire hits 22.5 psi, you watch out!
Funny, now, that the presence of TPMS has given automakers another reason to fully ditch spare tires in new cars. Saving weight, after all, improves CAFE results and keeps automakers all-square with NHTSA.
Driver safety? “Heck, we’ll give them a bottle of sealant and an underpowered pocket compressor, and they’ll be fine. The important thing is that without the spare, drivers will enjoy another 1-2 miles per gallon!”
We did get improved tires that are more reliable than ever before – not that there was anything really wrong before. Still, the tires today are far better. And, at the first hint of real or imagined trouble, tiremakers are now quite quick to pull the trigger on a recall.
