I agree with bogie, the piece included abunch of speculation but not any statistics at all. Considering they are supposed to be investigative reporters, they provided no actual information.
Also note in less than five minutes of searching on the net , I found an interesting statistic from a published report by the nhtsa.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd...g_MacIsaac.pdf
This is a powerpoint presentation on research into creating a methodology for simulating tire aging and creating a standard tire aging performance test, slide 4 is interesting in that it says 1.1% of all light vehicle accidents are coded with tire problems.
Note I have to wonder how effective this research might prove to be in regards to actual safety improvements, while it may prove to be usefull in pre-production testing to help as part of the design process, this one statistic makes me wonder if it will actually translate to improved safety in real life on the road in the form of a tire age standard. If 1.1% of accidents have tire problem listed as a contributing factor, that means 98.9% didn't have tire related problems as a contributing factor, also tire problems is a wide open listing and not all accidents listed a having tire problems are goiing to be due to the age of the tire.
Also it is interesting to note that in 1997 there were 6,764,000 accidents in the united states, of those 37,280 resulted in a fatality, using the nhtsa tire problem % that translates into 410 crashes that resulted in fatalities.
For comparison purposes while tire problems were listed at 1.1%, roll over rate in fatal accidents was listed at 21.1%.