Tire Treads Sometimes Separate

Recent cases involving failure of Firestone tires put on Ford Explorers have drawn national attention. The issue involved in those cases was tread separation. Unfortunately, Firestone is far from the one manufacturer to manufacture tires with problems involving tread separation. Actually, most of the other companies in the industry have similar problems. These include Cooper, Goodyear, Continental, and Uniroyal-Goodrich among others.

Call us at Carabin Shaw, we will fight to get you the compensation you deserve. Call 800-862-1260.

Tires are made in layers. The explanation of this process is fairly simple. The innermost liner of a tire is covered with radial body piles. These piles are then covered over with steel belts. The outside rubber layer of a tire that we all see on trucks and cars is entitled the tread. Sometimes, there is a nylon overlay system which sits in between the steel belted layer and the layer with the treads. In the tire manufacturing industry, the overlay nylons layer is called the "safety belt." Systems using a safety belt are safer. They are currently put on high-end American made tires and tires in many European markets. If a tire doesn’t have the “safety belt” design, the treads will be on top of the steel belts and will bond with them through use of an adhesive rubber compound.

Tires sometimes suffer from “tread separation.” This happens when the outer layer of tire tread separates suddenly from the tread layers underneath it. When a “tread separation” happens, that separation can cause an almost immediate loss of tire pressure. It may also lead to a complete tire rupture. This is called “blowout.” When a tire blows out or suffers tread loss, the motor vehicle involved will almost always become almost impossible to properly control. This is especially when moving at the speeds used on highways. This uncontrollability often results in a vehicle’s direction changing suddenly. The vehicle can swing around sideways to the direction it was traveling. This sideways motion in a vehicle can cause the tire’s rim to drag along or into the road causing a potentially serious and possibly deadly rollover accident.

Additionally, rollover accidents can also occur frequently if a motor vehicle encounters a major change in texture of the road surface. This could include moving off of pavement onto grass and/or dirt. This is especially dangerous if the vehicle is moving sideways. When this happens, the surface changes will usually tip over the vehicle and put it into a roll over.

Call us at Carabin Shaw, we will fight to get you the compensation you deserve. Call 800-862-1260.

“Tread Separation” can be caused by many different design and/or manufacturing failures. Such defects can include include improperly designing and placing the belts and their overlying tread. It can include failuring to include a nylon overlay or other “safety belt” system. It can also result from adhesion of the various tire components. Generally, poor adhesion among the metal components within the tire and the rubberized tire tread is a leading cause when tire treads separate.

Adhesion failures often result from one of several different manufacturing or design problems. These can include using expired or old adhesives, having unclean manufacturing facilities, manufacturing the product at the wrong temperatures, mixing the chemicals incorrectly and/or introducing contaminants including grease, moisture, or other foreign materials, or rust and oxidation of the materials or equipment. The risk of tread separation also increases in warm weather and/or when moving at high speeds. These can compromise the adhesive which is used to bind elements of a tire to one another.

Because of the difficulty of getting proper adhesion of rubber and metal, tread separation as a problem mostly concerns radial tires with steel belts. Tire manufacturers should reduce the risk treads separating through inclusion of a nylon overlay safety system into their designs. This system places a nylon cap, called a "safety belt," in between the steel belted area and the outside of the tire tread. This nylon cap safety system helps to stabilize steel belts and permits better adhesion between the inner and outer sections of a tire.

This system is used widely in higher end American made tires and in most European tires. Inclusion of this safety feature into a tire’s design only marginally increases costs for the manufacturer. There is really no reasonable reason for its omission. Current government and industry safety standards do not require manufacturers to use the nylon overlay system. Because of this, numerous manufacturers continue producing potentially unsafe products to save small increase in cost of production.

If you are injured in such an accident, Call us at Carabin Shaw, we will fight to get you the compensation you deserve. Call 800-862-1260.