A couple of thoughts:
First, I am convinced that I can not convince people about the relative truth of their assertions regarding ST tires. They are invested in their position and while they don't have the facts to back them up, they wouldn't accept anything that doesn't fit their view of things. I'll give you an example.
Some folks have asserted that the goverment testing is more stringent for LT tires than for ST tires. They conveniently leave out the fact that ST tires carry 20% more load than a comparable LT tire - meaning the same test would be more difficult for an ST tire.
And a tidbit that most folks don't know. The government testing doesn't assure high quality tires. In today's environment (meaning customer acceptance of the durability failure rate), a tire manufacturer has to have a tire perform much above the government minimums - to the point where the government testing is virtually meaningless except as a benchmark.
I'll bet that many Chinese tire manufacturers entered the US market through the ST tire door and thought that meeting the US government minimums would be acceptable - and if they got any return data (the way most tire manufacturers guage how well their products are performing), they found very little hard evidence to contradict that position. Certainly folks here have stated that they didn't even notify NHTSA of their tire failures, so how is anyone who is in a position to change things supposed to know that they need to?
I expect to get flamed for the above remarks.
Oh and regarding the NHTSA data: Every quarter every tire manufacturer (and vehicle manufacturer, for that matter) is required to send to NHTSA their warranty data, as well as any reports of damage or personal injury - and while the data doesn't have the level of detail suggested by profdant139, it has enough to alert NTHSA that they might want to investigate.
