I emailed one of our tire guys & his response is below (spelling errors & his name edited).
I did rewatch the video & noticed that the tire carcasses that they pointed out on the shoulders of the roads all appear to be retread casings probably from semi's. You will hardly ever see any passenger car tire treads lying on the roads.
Here's his response:
Hi there,
Gotta love the news!
The RMA (Rubber Manufacturers Association) has stated that there are no documented accidents because of tire age. The are too many variables to make a blanket statement that tires are too old at 6 years. (Kurts here: I disagree, if there's a chance that my old tire might come apart when I'm passing a truck count me as being concerned!)
As a company we have about 2 tires that would fall into this category when we transitioned the sale of Distribution (Kurts again, we recently sold our tire distribution biz. We were starting to get squeezed from some of the jumbo tire distributors & this part of the business just wasn't as profitable anymore)…I threw away 2 tires that I felt were too old). We turn our inventory too many times to end up with tires this old. A couple of the obsolete/discontinued tires might fall into this category.
USAF…the company we now purchase our tires from have a corporate policy of not selling tires that are more than 3 years old.
There are companies out there that have inventories that are so deep they could never move them quick enough and might end up with old stuff.
For our part, I don’t see any problems with however this ends up in the future.
Xxxxx Xxxx
Team Leader/Advisor
Xxxx Xxxxxxx Companies
phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx, fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Good morning, Xxxxx!
A question: I saw an ABC News blurb a few days ago pointing out the danger of driving on old-sold-as-new tires – those that are 6 years old & older. Evidently, in the U.K., their tire lobby has strongly recommended that all tires 6 years old or older NOT be sold to the public. Somewhere here in the states a gentleman whose daughter was killed in an auto accident & was driving on newly purchased ‘old’ tires successfully sued the tire dealer & the tire manufacturer (Goodrich).
What’s TSC’s policy for old tires? Do we keep them & try to sell them or do we return them?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4988518
Kurt Xxxxxxxx
System Support Specialist
Xxxx Xxxxxxxx Companies
phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx x362 x400, fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx