By Frank Swoboda
and Cindy Skrzycki
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday,
June 21, 2001;
Page E03
Motorists wondering about the safety of the tires Ford Motor Co. is using to replace Firestones on their vehicles will have to wait at least a month to learn the answer.
Federal safety officials said yesterday they need at least 30 days to gather and review information from tire manufacturers to determine whether some of those new tires are worse than the 13 million Firestone tires Ford recently decided to replace.
The confusion over the replacement tires began Tuesday when Rep. W.T. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, charged at a hearing that at least seven models of tires made by other manufacturers had higher rates of property-damage and injury claims than the Firestone Wilderness AT tires being replaced. That number had grown to 11 by the time committee members met with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials yesterday.
Ford chief executive Jacques Nasser testified at the hearing that he would quickly remove any bad tires from Ford's replacement list if the data prove they perform poorly.
The NHTSA officials said at the hearing they would examine Tauzin's data and come back with an answer in a day. But yesterday they said they would need more time.
"NHTSA will have to reach out to the [tire] manufacturers to get some data," a Transportation Department official said. "We need to review the claims data and work with the appropriate manufacturers to get other data to help understand what these numbers mean."
Robert Shelton, acting administrator of NHTSA, and Kenneth Weinstein, associate administrator for safety assurance, met with committee staff members for about an hour.
The fuller review will take at least 30 days, officials said. The replacement program is already underway.
Tauzin chided the safety agency in a brief statement after yesterday's meeting. "Unfortunately, NHTSA officials -- despite their claims yesterday at our hearing -- could not and would not say that any of the replacement tires on our list were safe or should, in fact, be included in Ford's replacement program."
Tauzin said he was requesting that Ford immediately begin testing the tires he said might have more problems than the Firestones being replaced -- using the same testing methods the company used to evaluate the Firestone tires.
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the senior Democrat on Tauzin's committee, issued his own statement after the meeting criticizing the decision to publicize the performance data on the replacement tires. "Today's briefing substantiated my concern that the majority staff analysis was released prematurely and with minimal regard for the very real fears of consumers," Dingell said. "In the end, NHTSA could not and would not now say that any tires on Chairman Tauzin's list, including Ford replacement tires, were bad."
Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson said: "We have never at any time said these tires were unsafe. All we've said is they have tread-separation claims greater than the Wilderness ATs being replaced by Ford."
Ford officials said yesterday they had not heard anything from NHTSA about the meeting. A spokeswoman said NHTSA has to get permission from the individual tire companies before it can share any data with the automaker