Tire Safety

 As cars have gotten safer, the safety groups are being forced to focus on marginal issues to justify theri existance. The newest safety "fad" is a tire expiration date. Amazingly, older tires seem to fail, and unlike that gallon of milk in your refrigerator, there's no expiration date on your tire sao you know when to replace it.

 There is a manufacture date on your tires, but like the article syas, "In the United States, consumers and tire dealers must decipher part of a serial number engraved on one side of a tire to determine the date it was manufactured". All it takes to "decipher" your tire's manufacture date is a quick search on Google, and voila, there's the answer. Look for the DOT certification, and the last four numbers are the manufacture date, the first two the week, the last two the year.

 Now, if someone is not going to take the effort to figure this out, how likely are they to pay attention to an expiration date? Consumers abuse the hell out of tires, and you see it every day. Tires with almost no tread, tires that are dangerously underinflated, the list goes on and on.

 It would be one thing if people were dying left and right, but the safety group can only produce 50 examples of this problem, resulting in 37 deaths. Plus, that's data over at least 5 years, not 50 examples in one year. Imagine what a difference could be made if the safety groups focused on something that would make a real impact, like driver education perhaps? Oh wait, then we couldn't blame evil corporations, we'd actually have to take responsibility for our actions. Never mind.