Defective Tires

There are many news reports of one car collisions in which a vehicle goes out of control and strikes an object, such as a median barrier or a tree, killing the occupant. While it is only natural to assume that the driver of the vehicle was somehow at fault, this is not always the case. In our practice, we see cases in which it first appears that the driver was at fault, but further investigation reveals that a defective tire was the cause of the collision.
Defective tires are an ever growing problem in the United States. There is a high level of danger that the belts in steelbelted radial tires can separate if they are subjected to under-inflation, overloading, overheating, or excessive speed. Once the steelbelts separate, the tire will begin to disintegrate and the driver will in most incidents lose control of the vehicle.
Increasingly, there have been warnings about the use of tires which have aged beyond a number of years. The theory is that as a tire ages, it is subjected to natural disintegration which can lead to belt separation. In fact, certain automobile manufacturers now are recommending that tires over a certain age, usually six years old, not be placed on a vehicle. This warning is especially ominous when one considers that a large part of the tire market in the United States consists of the sale of used tires. The purchaser of a used tire generally has no knowledge of when the tire was manufactured or what conditions it has been subjected to prior to the purchase.
There is a growing tendency among the construction hauling industry, especially on trucks such as dump trucks, to install used tires. The possibility of tread separation is greatly enhanced in these types of vehicles since they are routinely subjected to heavy loads which can increase the danger of tread separation. Results can be catastrophic, especially when a fully loaded dump truck speeds out of control on a major highway.
This firm has been successful in pursuing cases in which there initially appeared to be no liability, but investigation later revealed a belt separation.