JEDDAH, 8 October 2006 — Despite efforts by the traffic authorities to crack down on the sale of used tires, the practice of re-selling old tires that could pose a danger is still common in the Western Region.

An investigative reporting by Al-Riyadh newspaper last week exposed the common practice of selling used tires to customers seeking to save a bit of money in exchange for putting themselves, their families, and other drivers at risk.

“Customers prefer used tires because they want a usable tire for a bargain,” said Behram Al-Afghani, a tire shop store worker. “A used tire ranges between SR20 and SR30.”

However, the savings can result in accidents because old tires can blow out, causing accident, injury or death at high speeds.

“People want a cheap price regardless of the quality,” said Al-Afghani. “They don’t really care that these tires can cost them lives.”

In another shop, a worker opens a big iron door and reveals about 150 used tires of various makes and wears stacked in tubular piles. Asked if anyone has ever inspected their tire-selling operation, the salesman, who did not want to give his name, said inspectors come by thrice a year.

“But they don’t check tires,” he added. “They don’t even come into the store. They just stand outside.”

Ibrahim Shah Ahmad, another tire seller, admitted that his shop re-sells the tires taken off cars. “It’s good business for us,” said Ahmad. “We buy them for SR30 and we sell them for between SR40 and SR100.”

He said that customers are aware that the tires they are selling have been removed from the cars of customers who buy new treads.

Muhammad Faridy, a manager of a center that sells new tires in Jeddah, said that the sale of used tires has gone global.

“Dealers are importing old tires from Europe and Japan, where stringent laws prohibit re-sales,” he said. “Then they bring them into Arab countries where the laws are lax or enforcement is virtually non-existent. These folks sell tires without any moral or ethical considerations regarding the number of people that die each year by tires that break apart at high speeds.”

The Saudi government has no statistics about the number of accidents caused by faulty or old tires, but the country’s lax enforcement of traffic laws encourages people to speed. Coupled with little enforcement in the re-sale of used tires, it is fair to assume that at least some of the accidents in the Kingdom are being caused by fatal high-speed blowouts.

“Furthermore, a number of tires in our market have been factory rejects,” said Faridy. “They are new tires that have been rejected for use in machinery, but are OK to sell for manually operated or animal-drawn carts, or low-speed equipment. The problem is that many of these tires end up for sale to car owners. It could be as much as 20 percent of the tire market.”

Faridy points out that these faulty tires are more likely to appear in the inventories of less-scrupulous vendors, and he warns customers to be wary of salesmen offering too-good-to-be-true prices, who are willing to sell you used tires, or who have large inventories of cheap, off-brand tires. Certified dealers are less likely to be selling manufacturing rejects, he added.