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Bad tires a factor in Pearl River crash that killed teen

The following is a tragic story from the Journal News:

PEARL RIVER — Bad tires combined with pouring rain and a steep hill caused the crash that claimed the life of 15-year-old Justin Rogers earlier this month, Orangetown police said Thursday.

The driver of the car, 17-year-old Steven Gerard Lowney of Nanuet, has been issued a ticket citing inadequate tires, police Sgt. Sean Russo said.

Lowney was driving his father's 2002 Honda Accord the afternoon of May 3 when the car struck a guardrail on Veterans Highway, went off the road and rolled down a 35-foot embankment before coming to rest in a streambed.

Rogers was his only passenger. The Pearl River teen's leg was severed in the crash and he died in a New York City hospital three days later. Both boys were students at Pearl River High School.

"A combination of factors led to this horrible, horrible tragedy," Russo said.

Investigators examining the car found that the rear tires did not meet state standards. According to those standards, the grooves on the treads have to be four thirty-seconds of an inch deep, Russo said.

He would not say what the depth of the tire treads on Lowney's car were, other than that they did not meet the state standards.

Bald tires can be particularly dangerous when roads are wet, said Robert Sinclair Jr., spokesman for the Automobile Club of New York.

"When you have minimal tread depth, it allows the film of water to build up under the tire," Sinclair said. "In essence , the tire is no longer in contact with the road — there's no traction."

A study released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2001 indicated that more than one-fourth of passenger car tires and almost one-third of light truck tires may be underinflated, which can lead to wear.

"You are more likely to get excessive tread wear when your tires are improperly inflated," Sinclair said.

Typical tires on a Honda should last for about 50,000 miles, said Rich Slavis, a manager at Eastern State Tire Corp. in West Nyack.

People are keeping their cars longer, likely because of the poor economy, Slavis noted.

"We try to explain to people how important it is to make sure they have good tires," he said. "Some people have no idea."

The police investigation into the fatal crash did not show any other factors that could have lead to the accident.

There was no indication that either boy was talking on a cell phone or texting, Russo said.

Speed did not appear to be a factor.

"We are confident that was not the case," he said. "We are confident that the primary contributing factors were a combination of inadequate tires and the rainstorm."

Both Lowney and Rogers were wearing their seat belts, the investigation concluded. Lowney suffered minor injuries and was treated at Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern.

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