Defective Tire Lawsuits

Defective tires can cause serious motor vehicle accidents. When a defective tire suddenly and unexpectedly fails or blows out at high speed on the road the results can be catastrophic for drivers and passengers. Auto accidents caused by defective tires can cause serious injuries and even death.

Individuals who are seriously harmed in an auto or truck accident that was caused by defective tires can get financial compensation from for their losses by filing a defective tire lawsuit against the manufacturer. This page will discuss product liability cases involving defective tires and what the potential settlement value of these cases is.

About Defective Tires and Auto Accidents

Tires are a critical component of any car, truck or motor vehicle because the tires are the only point of contact that they vehicle makes with the roadway. This means that tires are critically important to safe handling and braking of the vehicle. If the tires do not function properly the driver can lose control of the vehicle and cause major damage.

Defective tires are not necessarily a leading cause of vehicle accidents in terms of numbers. However, tire failures do happen a lot more often than you might think. Data from the NHTSA indicates that defective tires or tire failures accounts for 35% of accidents attributable to vehicle failure (as opposed to driver negligence).

When accidents are caused by tire failures, they tend to have very serious and harmful consequences. This is partly because tire failures usually happen suddenly when the vehicle is traveling at high speeds. When a defective tire fails at high speed it usually blows out or explodes into small fragments. This leaves the rim of the wheel entirely exposed which often causes the vehicle to violently spin out of control, often rolling over from the force.

Tire Defects

Defects in the design or manufacture of tires can cause them to suddenly wear out or fail long before they would normally be expected to. Most tires are designed to last for about 65,000 to 85,000 miles before being at risk for failure other wear related issues.

Most tire defects are attributable to issues in the manufacturing process. These are known as manufacturing defects. Common types of manufacturing defects resulting in unsafe tires include:

• Problems or irregularities during the bonding process
• Contamination of the material components
• Under-vulcanization
• Use of old or improper ingredients or materials
• Improperly sized components
• Air getting trapped inside the layers of the tire during manufacture

All of these common manufacturing errors can cause major tire problems such as tread separation or blowout.

Tire Blowouts

A tire blowout happens when there is an abrupt and significant drop in the internal air pressure of a tire, causing it to lose its structural integrity almost instantly. This sudden pressure loss leads to the tire rapidly deflating, and when the vehicle is moving at high speeds, the tire can explode into pieces. Tire blowouts are often a consequence of defects in the tire’s design or manufacturing process that compromise its ability to maintain air pressure.

Defects such as weak spots in the tire wall, substandard bonding of the internal layers, or poor quality control during the manufacturing process can all contribute to this dangerous failure. For example, during the bonding process, if the different layers of the tire (such as the rubber, steel belts, and fabric layers) do not adhere properly, it can create a vulnerability where air can escape.

Over time, as the tire is subjected to heat and pressure while driving, these weak spots can cause a sudden release of air, leading to a blowout. Other factors like tread separation—where the tire’s tread peels away from the body—also cause the tire to rapidly lose its air pressure and explode. This increases the risk of a serious accident, especially on highways where high speeds exacerbate the danger.

Tread Separation

Tread separation (also called detreading) is another common type of tire failure that can result in serious accidents. Tread separation happens when the tread on the tire becomes separated from the steel belts underneath and inside the body of the tire. Detreading is the most common type of tire failure in radial tires.

Tread separation can result in a tire blowout, but it is not necessarily the same defect. Even when tread separation does not result in a full blowout, it can still have the same dangerous consequences. When the tread becomes detached from the belts at higher speeds, it can cause a sudden loss of vehicle control just like a blowout. Defects or flaws in the tire manufacturing process are the most common cause of tread separation.

Common Auto Accidents Caused by Defective Tires

Defective tire failures such as blowouts or detreading can and often do result in very serious vehicle accidents. The types of auto accidents caused by defective tires include:

• Rollovers
• Spinning out
• Lane crossing
• Loss of control
• Running off road

When tires fail due to defects, the resulting loss of control of the vehicle can be dangerous for everything and everyone around.

Liability for Auto Accidents Caused by Defective Tires

If you are injured in a auto or truck accident and you can prove that the accident was directly caused by defective tires that failed on the road, then you and anyone else who was injured in the accident can bring a defective tire lawsuit against the tire company. Like all product manufacturers, tire companies have a legal duty to ensure that there products are reasonably safe for their intended purpose. This includes ensuring that they do not have manufacturing defects.

If a manufacturer makes a defective batch of tires and those tires fail on the road and cause injuries, that manufacturer can be held liable for any and all injuries and damages resulting from the tire failure.

Defective Tire Lawsuits

Anyone injured in an accident caused by defective tires may have the right to file a tire defect lawsuit against the company that manufactured or sold the faulty tires. These defective tire lawsuits allow plaintiffs to seek compensation for injuries, property damage, and other losses. To succeed, plaintiffs need to prove that the tire was indeed defective and that this defect directly led to the tire failure, which ultimately caused the accident.

One of the biggest challenges lawyers face in defective tire cases is demonstrating the presence of a defect and explaining exactly how that defect occurred. This often requires expert analysis of the tire’s materials, structure, and design. In some situations, tire manufacturers issue recalls after identifying flaws in certain tire models, which can make proving a defect much easier. If a plaintiff’s tire is part of a recall, it can serve as strong evidence that the tire was defective by design or during manufacturing, simplifying the process of establishing liability. However, even when a recall has not been issued, plaintiffs can still prove defectiveness through meticulous evidence collection and expert testimony.

Defective Tire Verdict and Settlements

Below are settlements and verdicts from recent defective tire cases. The defendants in these cases range from major tire manufacturers, like Bridgestone, to auto retailers and repair shops.

• $2,500,000 Verdict (Florida 2022): 3 days after purchasing used tires from the defendant tire company, the plaintiff’s tire suffered a blowout causing him to lose control of the vehicle, run off the roadway and roll several times. The plaintiff and 3 of his minor grandchildren suffered serious injuries in the accident and sued the tire company alleging that the used tires were defective when they were sold. A jury agreed and awarded $2.5 million.
• $3,010,000 Verdict (Pennsylvania 2021): A Pennsylvania jury awarded $3 million to a truck driver who alleged that defective Kumho Powerfleet 983 tires caused his vehicle to flip while carrying 72,000 pounds of sand. The driver suffered severe injuries, including fractures to his vertebrae, head, and face.  He hired a tire defect lawyer who filed a lawsuit. The jury found that the tire was defective in design, awarding $256,000 for past medical expenses, $554,000 for future care, $400,000 for lost household services, and $1.8 million in noneconomic damages. Kumho Tire USA was held liable, with the driver’s prior suit against the tire seller reaching a confidential settlement.
• $2,000,000 Settlement (Georgia 2021): A family of six, including two adults and four children, settled for $2 million following a rollover crash caused by a defective tire on their recently purchased used SUV. The tire’s tread separation led to several occupants being ejected, causing traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, and multiple orthopedic injuries. The father sustained a severe TBI, while the mother suffered a permanently disabling elbow injury. The settlement primarily covered $1.5 million in medical expenses, with the case against the tire and vehicle manufacturers ongoing. Specific case details remain confidential due to an agreement.
• $220,621 Verdict (Florida 2020): The plaintiff suffered serious injuries when the rear tire on his motorcycle sudden deflated causing him to lose control and crash. He sued the tire manufacture claiming that the motorcycle’s ‘tubeless tire’ system was defective. A jury awarded $220k.
• $10,665,000 Verdict (Pennsylvania 2018): The plaintiff and her daughter suffered serious, life impacting injuries when they struck a large piece of a tire in the roadway that came when a tire on a cement truck exploded ahead of them. They sued the tire company, Bridgestone, claiming that the tires on the cement truck were defectively manufactured causing them to detread on the road resulting in the accident.
• $15,000,000 Verdict (Florida 2018): a 41-year-old male, died while driving a sewage pumper truck, manufactured and sold by defendant National Truck Center Inc., when a tire, sold by National Truck, suffered a separation and blowout on the interstate, causing a crash into trees adjacent to the roadway. The lawsuit claimed that the pumper truck and tire were defective. It claimed, among other things, the tire had insufficient/inadequate rubber to steel and/or rubber to rubber bonding, inadequate dimensions and tolerances for tire components, bad adhesion, insufficient/inadequate inner liner thickness/gauge and air permeability.

Asbestos Tire Lawsuits

If you were seriously injured or your lost a loved one in an accident cause by defective tires, contact our national product liability lawyers today for free consultation at 800-553-8082 or reach out to us online.

Studies on Tire Defects

Zhao, G. & Qin, S. High-precision detection of defects of tire texture through X-ray imaging based on local inverse difference moment features. Sensors 18(8), 2524 (2018)

This study focuses on improving tire defect detection using a deep learning-based model to identify tire cracks, oxidation, and other surface defects. The research proposes an enhanced version of the ShuffleNet neural network for tire image analysis. The study compares the improved ShuffleNet with other models like GoogLeNet, VGGNet, and ResNet, showing that the improved ShuffleNet achieved the highest detection accuracy at 94.7%. That is pretty good and it is something trucking companies should use to make sure their vehicles are safe.

How does it work? The system analyzes tire images to detect defects. It drills down in particular on tire tread cracks, which are often hard to spot but pose significant safety risks as we have already talked about. The deep learning model operates by processing segmented images of tires, enabling it to detect patterns of cracks, oxidation, and wear. The study highlights that the system can save time and labor costs for both drivers and manufacturers by automating defect detection.

One of the study’s technical advancements is the introduction of the H-Swish activation function, which replaces traditional ReLU functions to optimize model performance. H-Swish enhances the network’s learning ability and improves accuracy in classifying tire conditions. This improvement, coupled with advanced feature extraction through convolutional neural networks, allows the model to detect even subtle defects that manual inspections might miss.

The paper also discusses the importance of tire oxidation detection. We all know that prolonged exposure to elements like sunlight and chemicals can cause structural weakening. The system’s ability to detect different types of tire defects, including cracks and oxidation, could revolutionize tire maintenance, providing real-time alerts to drivers and manufacturers before catastrophic failure occurs.