Defective Tire Recall System – Blown Out?

Have you replaced your vehicles tires recently…and feel good about your family’s safety because the tires are “new”? The National Transportation Safety Board completed a year long investigation in October 2015 on the status quo of our national recall system for car tires. Bottom line:

“Based on the work we did, that system’s not working. It’s completely broken.” ~ Rob Molloy – NTSB

In fact…the current system has left millions of tires in use, on store shelves or simply unaccounted for.  The NTSB estimates that there are “400 to 500 deaths a year, at least, from crashes involving tire-initiated events,” …meaning, tires that could have been underinflated, punctured or suffered from other pre-existing problems.

What can you do to learn whether your tires have been Recalled?

  1. Consumer Awareness – is an effective first step. Did you know that you need to register your tires with the manufacturer in order to receive recall notices?
  2. Check the Age of Your Tires – Ford, GM and Chrysler all recommend that tires more than six years old be replaced, regardless of how much they have been used.  Watch this video:


What can the NTSB do better to make it easier for consumers to tell if they tires are under recall??

  1. Tire Identification Number (TIN) lookup system implemented by manufacturers on their websites. Each tire already has its own TIN imprinted on the side of the tire.
  2. Newer Technology – the tires themselves could in form of embedded chips or scan-able codes to help auto shops quickly identify tires, the NTSB said, and update customer contact forms to ensure consumers get recall notices when they go out.

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Fixing a Wreck with Another Wreck? That Sounds Bad

Funny how asinine notions that we would never tolerate in an airplane trip environment…get considered acceptable by “too big to fail” companies that affect our family’s safety in our everyday driving vehicle.

Ford says:

You wouldn’t trust salvage parts in the airplane carrying you 30,000 feet up. Why trust them in your Ford?

Not all collision replacement parts are created equal. They can be recycled from wrecked cars, salvaged from a junkyard, or worse. It’s hard to know what will end up in your car—unless you ask. Ford collision replacement parts are engineered and tested to work as a system with your specific vehicle. If you need collision repairs, always insist on new OEM Ford parts at your certified Ford Dealership or independent installer.

Learn the right questions to ask, your collision repair rights and more at TakeAGoodLook. [UPDATE: The hilarious “That Sounds Bad” video by Ford has been ‘privatized’ on Youtube, so we had to replace it below.]

 

OEM vs Salvage & Aftermarket Auto Parts – Collision Safety Consultants:

The use of aftermarket parts could affect air bag deployment. It’s important to use manufacturer-recommended repair procedures and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts.

“There’s a lot of engineering that goes into making a crash-protection system,” says David Zuby, chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “You can’t willy-nilly change those parts because the system may not work the way it was designed.”

SOURCE: ConsumerReports – Are low-cost replacement bumpers safe?

Please note, this video was re-uploaded and edited due to a copyright claim made by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in which they had YouTube take our video down because it used some of their educational crash test footage.

We were disappointed that the IIHS, an organization dedicated to highway safety, had taken this action, and surprised, until we discovered that “State Farm helped found the organization in the 1950s and still is an active member of the IIHS Board of Directors.” Then, we were less suprised.

SOURCE: https://www.statefarm.com/about-us/community/safety-awareness/auto

Read More – Collision Safety Consultants

See Also: http://www.insure.com/car-insurance/oem-parts-rights.html

When to Take Grandma’s Car Keys

When should the driving privileges of senior, elderly drivers be restricted or revoked?? It’s an age old question (pardon the pun), but it’s also a fiery debate that get’s reignited whenever a traffic calamity involving a senior driver at fault makes the news.  Should it be when they turn 70?…maybe 80?  Should any 100 year old drivers be allowed on the road?


The legitimate answer hinges on the health of the driver.  Jake Nelson, director of traffic safety advocacy and research for AAA tells us that “Older drivers are actually the safest on the road…They’re often misrepresented.”…“If they’re hitting a group of people or crashing into a super market, clearly there’s an issue there but that does not mean that all older drivers are safety hazards. It’s just the opposite.”

The reality is, drivers 35 to 54 years old are the real problem on our roads.  They cause over 17,000 fatalities a year.  Finishing at a close second place… 21 to 34 years old…killing 15,057 people annually, according to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, a division of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

  • 55 to 85-plus years old — that’s a 30-year span — are responsible for roughly 11,260 fatal accidents a year.
  • 16-year-olds to 20-year-olds have more than double the fatal traffic crashes of 70+ year olds: 5,729 vs. 2,656.

But it’s the real life drama of tragic stories that get our attention because they make the news.

Medical issues more important than age

Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, Joseph Coughlin, says:

  • 110 million Americans are taking medications for one chronic condition that could be as mundane as seasonal sniffles to as debilitating as diabetes, Coughlin said.
  • 60 million Americans suffer from two chronic conditions while some
  • 20 million log five chronic conditions that they are under a combination of doctors’ prescriptions and/or an over-the-counter drug…

But two-thirds of people 65 and older take five or more medications every day that can affect driving ability. The side effects of taking an antihistamine or antidepressant may not be noticeable to people in their 40s, who as they age may then ignore warning signs.

Even worse, older drivers tend to have the highest death rates in car crashes versus their more accident-prone younger counterparts. The rates steadily rise as drivers age…80+ year olds are almost four times more likely to be killed in a car crash than 50-year-olds.  But the reason goes beyond drug issues: older, more feeble bodies with more brittle bones and weaker tissue.
Indications that something is wrong

Clearly, how to determine if and when an elderly driver you know…is no longer capable of safely controlling a car…is a sensitive and complicated issue. But they are conversations need to be engaged long before problems crop up.

Read More – MarketWatch

When a Car Crashes in Front of You

Ever consider how you might react, or even experience firsthand the sobering reality of seeing a serious car crash right in front of you while driving?  Unless you’re a trained highway safety expert or an Emergency Medical Technician (ahem), you may not have given it a second thought…until it happens to you.  With safety, medical, legal, insurance and probably several other complicating perspectives to consider, it’s hard to know where to begin.  Here, we’ll consider the layman’s perspective and depending on feedback, scrutinize other viewpoints in later posts.


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