CIMS Discusses NHTSA E-Registration Plan

Calling it a “win-win situation for tyre manufacturers, tyre dealers and more importantly for the tyre purchaser,” CIMS President Paul Kruder offered his endorsement of NHTSA’s plan to formally allow electronic tyre registration. NHTSA revealed last week that it would undertake changing tyre registration regulations to permit direct registration via the Internet or other electronic means. While not preventing such in recent years, NHTSA had not formally included non-paper registration means.

In a letter to the media, Kruder said, “These proposed changes will give tyre dealers the option of providing a paper tyre registration form to every customer or completing the tyre registration process electronically on behalf of the tyre purchaser. By improving tyre registration levels everybody wins, especially the tyre purchaser because of the safety protection registering tyres offers them and their families.

“By NHTSA, tyre manufacturers, brand owners and tyre dealers all working together to improve tyre registration levels and promote this invaluable consumer safety protection, everybody will benefit,” said Kruder. “When tyres get registered there is no better method to get potentially unsafe tyres off the highway.”

CIMS is the leading producer of tyre registrations forms and materials, and has not fully supported non-paper registrations means in the past. “We had some concerns initially when NHTSA first considered changes to the regulation. We will need to study the proposal completely but it looks like NHTSA has addressed these concerns and put procedures in place to protect against them,” Kruder said.

CIMS claims its “initial concerns and questions were often misinterpreted as being against electronic tyre registration. Our biggest concerns are to protect tyre dealers from additional burden and cost, safeguard the data by ensuring it ends up with the manufacturer, brand owner or designee and insure the cost of registering tyres is not passed onto the tyre purchaser,” Kruder said. (Tire Review/Akron)