June 26th, 2007

"Imported Tires To Be Recalled"

About 450,000 tires made in China for light pickup trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are the subject of a request for a recall by their U.S. distributor. The tires have an insufficient or entirely missing gum strip, which is a required safety feature that helps keep tires from separating. Tire separation is the flaw that led to a recall of 6.5 million Firestone tires in 2000, after hundreds of deaths and injuries due to tire separation were documented.

Telluride Compass, Westlake, and YKS Tires

The tire distributor, Foreign Tire Sales, is based in New Jersey. They got the tires from a Chinese manufacturer, Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., which apparently has sold similar tires to at least six more U.S. distributors. The tires have been sold in the United States under the brand names Telluride Compass, Westlake, and YKS.

Foreign Tire Sales has requested that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) help with a recall of the tires, which have been blamed for at least one fatal van accident already. However, importers are themselves responsible for the costs of a recall of defective foreign products that they sell.

Delay in Reporting the Defects

A spokeswoman for the NHTSA, Heather Hopkins, said that top officials at the NHTSA were "outraged" that executives at Foreign Tire Sales waited for more than two years to convey their concerns about the Chinese tires to the NHTSA. She added that the NHTSA wants a full tire recall to be performed by the company.

Officials for Foreign Tire Sales said that they began getting customer complaints about the Chinese tires in late 2005, and when they investigated the complaints, they began to suspect that the manufacturer Hangzhou Zhongce was supplying tires that did not have the gum strip or tires with an inadequate gum strip. Tests by an outside firm confirmed their suspicions.

Unsafe Tires Already on Many Vehicles

Foreign Tire Sales stopped buying the tires from Hangzhou Zhongce in June 2006. In September 2006, Hangzhou Zhongce admitted that it had decided to omit the gum strips. However, hundreds of thousands of the tires had already been released to the market by then.

If faulty tires or other car design flaws caused your accident or injury, contact an experienced defective tires attorney today to protect your rights.