Defective Tires from China: Where the Rubber Hits the Road, it's Buyer Beware

Union, NJWhen it comes to crashworthiness, the single most compelling feature of your car that could mean the difference between getting home safely, and winding up in a hospital is the footprint of your car on the road; the tires. Defective tires from China could potentially put the crashworthiness of your vehicle to the ultimate test, should the tires fail.

A radial tire manufactured without the all-important gum strip, a standard safety feature, could not only fail, but the results could be catastrophic.

On the subject of safety, it really is where the rubber hits the road.

"As consumers we are told to be mindful of our tires, check them for tread wear - and never, ever drive on bald, tread-bare tires. They could puncture, or hydroplane in a rainstorm.

And so we ensure that our vehicle tires are sound, not wanting to chance an accident, or put our loved ones at risk.

However, if your tires are imports from China, you're taking a huge risk just by putting them on your car.

Two recalls - one in June, and another in August - have pushed the issue into the public conscience, and provides the perception that regulatory agencies such as the NHTSA are doing something.

However, a recall of defective tires imported from China is not nearly enough, according to commentators and consumer watchdogs.

Congress needs to protect U.S. citizens from faulty products that could kill them, and as such it is failing the American people. What's worse, those faulty products are killing people all for the savings of a few cents.

That's the allegation over the accident that claimed the lives of two Pennsylvania residents, and severely injured a third, when treads separated from the tire and wrapped around the vehicle's axle, causing a violent accident. Missing from the tires was a critical safety feature: the gum strip, inclusion of which might add 25 or 30 cents to the cost of the tire.

Two individuals were killed and a third severely injured, to save two bits.

Now comes the scary part, because this accident - it happened in 2006 - could happen to anyone. In fact a huge segment of the population is at risk, given the fact that half of all tires sold in the United States are imports - and of those, a vast majority comes from communist China. What makes the situation all the worse is the fact that China has a whopping 83 per cent of the U.S. market share for off-road tires. Given the rigorous driving characteristics associated with this segment, the potential for disaster is staggering.

Tread separation is a serious defect that became the basis for the infamous Firestone tire recall of 2000, when millions of tires were removed from the market.

Given the plethora of recent news reports concerning tainted products coming out of China, one would expect U.S. regulatory officials to be taking a hard look at Chinese imports with an eye to preventing injury, or even death amongst Americans. The use of ethylene glycol (an ingredient in antifreeze) as a cheap substitute for glycerine in tooth paste, and poisonous melamine used to replicate healthy levels of protein in pet food, serves as a suggested template for the Chinese manufacturing mantra: lower costs to maximize profits without regard to safety or human health.

However, one also has to wonder about the sincerity and thoroughness of the U.S. regulatory environment and government as a whole, in the wake of the Firestone recall, and now the question about imported tires from China. The accident in Pennsylvania happened in August of last year. Only now is the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration getting into the act, urging the recall of almost a half-million defective radial tires for pickups, sport utilities and vans.

But that recall didn't happen until June of this year, months after the Pennsylvania crash where tread separation, and the lack of the gum strip, first came to light. The recall order went to Foreign Tire Sales Inc. (FTS) of New Jersey, a large tire importer.

For its part, FTS Inc. has since announced a further recall of 255,000 Chinese-made tires because of concern over the potential absence of the gum strip, a standard safety feature.

The defective tires were manufactured by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co - the second-largest tire manufacturer in China. The company is defending its product and bristles at any suggestion that China is dumping cheap tires into the American market. FTS Inc. is suing Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co over the defect, as is the family of the occupants killed in the August 2006 crash in Pennsylvania.

Among the tires manufactured by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co of China are Westlake, Compass and YKS. They have been included in the FTS Inc. recall.

A staggering 32 million tires were imported from China last year.