An Epidemiologic Analysis of Causal Factors in Tire Failure-Related Traffic Crashes

The cause of traffic crashes that follow a sudden tire
failure is a point of contention in the literature. Some
authors have indicated that such crashes are attributable
to the loss of stability and control that is inherent in a tire
failure that occurs at speed, and other authors have reported
that experimentally induced tire failures do not result in a
catastrophic loss of control, and thus driver error is a more
likely cause of such crashes. In the present study we evaluated
16 years of data from the National Automotive Sampling
System-Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS) for 2000-
2015 in order to assess the epidemiologic features of tire
failure-related crashes and to examine crash causation factors.
The results of the analysis indicated an annual average of
nearly 11,000 tire failure-related crashes in the NASS-CDS
data (1 in 270 crashes). Rollover and other non-collision
crashes were substantially more common among the tire
failure crashes than the non-tire failure crashes (91% versus
27% for all non-collisions, and 25% versus 7% for rollover
crashes, respectively), and there was a 75% lower rate of
adverse road or weather conditions in the tire failure versus
non-tire failure crashes (6% versus 24%). Vehicles with a lower
resistance to rollover (SUVs and pickup trucks) that crashed
due to a tire failure rolled 3.2 times more often than passenger
cars (49% versus 15%), and 7 times more often in comparison
with all vehicles involved in non-tire failure-related crashes.
The analysis indicated that the largest explanation for a
crash following a tire failure is the instability and associated
loss of control resulting from the tire failure, rather than any
factors attributable to driver error or reaction.