The wrong fights.

The new 2008 automobile models are now in the showrooms and all are to be equipped with tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS). This is an outgrowth of the TREAD Act which was in response to the Ford rollover problem. If you remember, back in 2002, the National Highway Safety Administration ordered all cars to have what is called a direct tire pressure monitoring system. Shortly thereafter, the Detroit automakers, who were against a direct system, pressured someone in Washington, as they are good at it, and the NHTSA directive was scuttled. The final rule issued that year would have allowed the installation of ineffective TPMS. The agency forgot what the S in their acronym meant.

This brought about lawsuits from tire companies and consumer safety groups. A year later, the agency was ordered by a U.S. Court of Appeals to rewrite the standard that the court said was clearly a faulty system.

Guess what? The new models have basically the same faulty system. The last attempt by the tire manufacturers to have the safer, direct TPMS was dismissed in court, not on the merit of the arguments concerning a safe TPMS, but on the legal opinion that the tiremakers had no right to litigate such action.

The tire companies have all the reasons they need to want a reliable TPMS. Anytime there is an accident where the tire is the source, they get taken to court. A faulty TPMS would just lead to more litigation because motorists would have a false sense of security about their tire pressure. The biggest problem is that the new standard does not cover replacement tires. Quite a problem when over 60% of all passenger car mileage and 54% of all light truck mileage is on replacement tires.

We are going to have to drop the old axiom, "What's good for General Motors is good for America." This is actually a snapshot of an industry that is fading in the U.S. The domestic car manufacturers are in a free fall over market share. And although the TPMS saga has very little to do with market share, it shows an industry that chooses the wrong fights.

They have fought corporate average fuel economy regulations ever since their inception, to their detriment. And as we all know, they would rather have an antagonistic relationship with most of their suppliers instead of one of cooperation and pursuance of a common goal. Maybe the market share isn't low enough to change thinking.