Summer Road-Trip Tire Blowouts: When a Defect Causes the Crash

You're doing 75 on I-75 heading up north for the weekend when there's a bang like a shotgun, the wheel jerks hard right, and suddenly you're fighting to keep two tons of loaded SUV out of the median. A tire blowout at highway speed is one of the most terrifying things that can happen to a driver — and when it's caused by a defective tire, someone other than you may be legally responsible.

Summer is blowout season in Michigan. Hot asphalt, fully loaded vehicles, long highway miles, and tires that have quietly aged in a garage all winter make June through September the peak stretch for catastrophic tire failures. Most drivers assume a blowout is just bad luck. Often it is. But a surprising number are caused by manufacturing defects, tread separation, and tires that were recalled or should have been — and those cases open the door to a product liability claim on top of your Michigan no-fault benefits.

What Actually Causes a Blowout

Not every blowout is a lawsuit. Tires wear out, pick up nails, and fail from simple underinflation. But defect-driven failures follow recognizable patterns, and an experienced eye can tell the difference. The most common defect-related failures include:

• Tread separation — the tread and top steel belt peel away from the tire carcass, often because the rubber didn't properly bond during manufacturing. This is the classic defect failure and frequently triggers rollovers in tall vehicles like SUVs and vans.
• Belt or ply adhesion failures — contamination, moisture, or old rubber stock during production leaves the internal layers unable to hold together under heat and load.
• Sidewall or bead failures that cause a sudden, explosive loss of air.
• Aged tires — a tire can look brand new with full tread but be dangerously old. Rubber degrades with time, and many experts warn tires over six years old should be retired regardless of appearance. Selling a decade-old “new” tire off a back shelf is a real problem in the industry.

Why SUVs and Vans Roll

A blowout on a low sedan is dangerous. A blowout on a tall, top-heavy SUV, pickup, or 15-passenger van is often deadly. When a rear tire lets go, the vehicle yaws violently. A driver's instinct is to steer hard and brake — the two worst things you can do — and the high center of gravity does the rest. Tread-separation rollovers were at the heart of some of the largest tire recalls in American history, and the physics haven't changed. If your crash involved a rollover after a tire failed, that detail alone is a red flag worth investigating.

Two Claims From One Crash

Here's where Michigan law gets interesting. A tire-defect crash can give rise to two separate avenues of recovery, and they don't cancel each other out.

1. Your Michigan No-Fault (PIP) Benefits

Michigan is a no-fault state. If you're injured in a motor vehicle accident — including a single-vehicle blowout crash where no other driver is involved — your own auto policy's Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits pay for your medical care and a portion of your lost wages, regardless of who or what caused the crash. That means even if the blowout was “nobody's fault” in the traditional sense, your PIP coverage should still respond. This is one of the genuine strengths of Michigan's system: you are not left with nothing while you sort out what went wrong. Our guide to PIP benefits breaks down exactly what's covered.

2. A Product Liability Claim Against the Tire Maker (and Others)

PIP does not pay for pain and suffering, and it caps certain benefits. When a defective tire caused the crash, you may also have a product liability claim against the parties who put that defective product into your hands. Potential defendants include the tire manufacturer, the distributor, and the shop that sold, mounted, or serviced the tire — for example, a shop that installed a dangerously old tire, mismatched tires, or ignored a visible defect. These are third-party claims, separate from no-fault, and they can pursue the full range of damages: pain and suffering, disfigurement, and losses beyond what PIP covers. Proving one requires showing the tire was defective and that the defect — not abuse or neglect by the driver — caused the failure, which is where proving negligence and defect becomes the whole ballgame.

Recalls: Check Before You Assume

Tires are recalled far more often than people realize, and manufacturers are not great at tracking down individual owners. A tire can be under an active recall for a tread-separation risk while it's still rolling down the highway. After a blowout crash, one of the first things we look at is whether that specific tire — identified by its DOT code stamped on the sidewall — was ever the subject of a recall or a pattern of similar failures. A recall doesn't automatically win your case, but it's powerful evidence that the manufacturer already knew the product was dangerous.

The Single Most Important Thing: Do Not Get Rid of the Tire

If you remember nothing else from this article, remember this: the failed tire is the case. In a product liability claim, the physical tire is the central piece of evidence. Experts examine it to determine whether the failure started with a manufacturing defect, tread separation, road hazard, or underinflation. Without the tire, proving a defect becomes vastly harder — sometimes impossible.

Unfortunately, tow yards and repair shops routinely discard damaged tires within days. Insurance companies sometimes take possession of the wreck and let the evidence disappear. We have seen strong cases fall apart simply because the tire was thrown in a dumpster before anyone thought to save it.

What To Do After a Blowout Crash: A Checklist

1. Get medical attention right away. Rollover and high-speed crashes cause spinal, head, and internal injuries that don't always hurt at the scene.
2. Preserve the tire — and the wheel and all other tires. Tell the tow company and body shop in writing not to discard anything. If you can, take custody of the failed tire yourself.
3. Photograph everything — the tire, the tread, the shredded rubber on the road, the DOT number on the sidewall, the vehicle, skid marks, and the scene.
4. Write down the tire's history — where and when you bought it, who installed it, and any recent service or warnings.
5. Report the crash and get the police report number. A single-vehicle crash still needs documentation.
6. Notify your own insurer to open your PIP claim promptly — Michigan's benefit deadlines are strict.
7. Don't let the insurer take and scrap the vehicle before an expert inspects the tire.
8. Call a lawyer before you talk to the tire company. Manufacturers move fast to control the evidence; you should too.

Comparative Fault and Deadlines

Expect the defense to argue that you caused the failure — underinflation, overloading for the trip, hitting a pothole, or driving on bald tires. Michigan uses modified comparative fault, so your recovery can be reduced by your share of responsibility, and being found more than 50% at fault can bar non-economic damages. That's exactly why preserving the tire matters: a proper engineering inspection can rebut those arguments and pin the failure on the defect. Keep the deadline in mind, too. Michigan's statute of limitations for injury claims is generally three years from the crash, but evidence disappears in days, so the practical deadline to act is far shorter.

Bottom Line

A summer blowout can look like plain bad luck, but the truth is often stamped right into the sidewall of the tire that failed. Michigan no-fault protects your medical bills and wages no matter what caused the crash — and if a defective or recalled tire was to blame, a product liability claim can hold the manufacturer and seller accountable for everything no-fault leaves on the table. The one thing you can't undo is throwing the tire away. Save it, and let us take a hard look before anyone else does.

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