You love your car. In my case, there’s nothing more invigorating than riding around the city with my windows down in my speedy yet sleek blacked-out 2015 Chevy Cruze. 1.4 liter, baby. Love that car! Do you know what I don’t love? Recalls on car parts or tires that hinder my ability to take Tom Cruze here on the road.
Tire shops and dealerships deal with tire safety recalls all the time, so in this Tire Review Continental Tire Garage Studio video, we’ll dive into what tire safety recalls are and some technology to make the registration and prevention process a little easier.
According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, tires can be recalled for any number of defects in their design or manufacture. In the event of a recall, tire manufacturers are obligated by law to use first-class mail in an attempt to notify owners on record. How do they know who sold or even bought those tires, though? This is where all-important tire registration comes in.
While some major tire distributors will register the Department of Transportation (DOT) Tire Identification Numbers (TIN) for their customers, most don’t offer automatic tire registration – causing some retailers to handle it on their own.
NHTSA then is supposed to monitor each safety recall to make sure owners receive safe, free, and effective remedies from manufacturers, according to the Safety Act and Federal regulations.
With all these identification numbers and complicated steps to follow, retailers who register tires themselves have some technology options to make the entire process quick and easy.
Take, for example, mobile scanning phone applications. By removing manual data entry from the process, mobile tire scanning simplifies tire inspection. When connected to the NHTSA database, it can alert retailers to tires that have been recalled due to defects in the manufacturing process – alerting of any issues long before it is on the road.
Want a fully automated registration process in the palm of your hand? Leaders in the technology and sensor game in the auto industry are coming out with new and updated joint tire registration scanning systems. The ability to scan the TIN to register, check for recalls, and confirm tire age will increase the number of tire dealers registering tires resulting in a consumer safety win.
