November 21, 2000
A WSJ.COM News Roundup
WASHINGTON -- Federal safety regulators opened an investigation Tuesday into Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. light-truck tires linked to at least 15 U.S. traffic deaths, three months after reports of tread separations on Firestone tires led to a nationwide recall.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received 37 complaints about tread separations on Goodyear's Load Range E tires, including reports of 31 crashes involving 15 deaths and 129 injuries.
The accidents have involved light trucks, passenger vans and small buses, according to NHTSA. The investigation will examine 21 million tires manufactured between 1991 and 1999.
Goodyear was notified that the agency opened a preliminary investigation Tuesday, and company officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Goodyear spokesman Chris Aked said Monday evening that the Load Range E tires have been used as original equipment on large trucks made by Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG, including the Dodge Ram 4250 and 350 series trucks. Many of those trucks have been modified for commercial purposes, he said.
The tires are sold under many different brand names and sizes, and NHTSA said it would develop a complete list during the investigation.
NHTSA opens any safety investigation with a preliminary inquiry in which the government and manufacturer exchange paperwork that includes any complaints. An investigation eventually can lead to a recall, but many end without such action.
Mr. Aked said the Akron, Ohio-based tire maker had investigated 30 accidents involving the tires and attributed them to problems such as overloading and underinflation, not a defect.
"We've said all along that we're very confident in the integrity of the tires," Mr. Aked said. "There is not any issue with the quality of the tires. There was no reason to take any action as far as I'm concerned."
Chris Spagnoli, a Santa Monica, Calif., attorney suing Goodyear over tread separation accidents, said: "I think there is a lot of red flags about these tires both from the accidents that we have information about and the public part of the deposition testimony."
Similar allegations led to Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.'s Aug. 9 recall of 6.5 million ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires. NHTSA has received reports of 119 deaths and more than 500 injuries involving Firestone tires.
The federal highway-safety agency has come under intense criticism from Congress in recent months for failing to act sooner to push for the Bridgestone/Firestone recall. Critics have cited a 1998 e-mail message sent to NHTSA by State Farm Insurance noting a pattern of 21 claims involving Firestone tires over the previous six and a half years.
More recently, NHTSA officials have been embarrassed by cases in which tire makers withheld information from investigators. The agency's former chief defects investigator, Michael Brownlee, has testified in a pending civil lawsuit that he wouldn't have closed a 1993 investigation into Continental General Tire Inc. had he known about a quiet replacement program the company conducted during the early 1990s. Similarly, in the Firestone investigation, NHTSA officials have complained that Ford Motor Co. didn't bother to notify them until last May that it had quietly begun replacing Firestone tires on its overseas vehicles in 1999.
In both cases, company officials said they weren't required to notify the agency about their replacement programs because they weren't related to safety, and thus didn't fall under federal regulations that require manufacturers to notify the government about recalls. In response, Congress last month passed legislation to toughen reporting requirements and penalties for noncompliance.
For its part, Goodyear maintains that in every case it has studied the tire failures can be traced to factors such as overloading vehicles or punctures, rather than a manufacturing defect. The company says it has produced 27.5 million of the tires since 1990. John Perduyn, a Goodyear spokesman, said 30 accidents arising from 27.5 million tires is "pretty infinitesimal and lower than the norm."
Goodyear began investigating its Load-Range E tires at least four years ago, based on internal claims data, and consequently began adding an extra layer of nylon to help hold the steel belts in place. However, the company took three years to make those changes on all the tires in that line.
Even as it was making those changes and as claims mounted, Goodyear didn't notify federal regulators about its investigation -- or the fix it made. The tire maker contends it didn't need to, because it found no defect in the tires.
"In this case, they formed a team to work on the issue, identified a problem, and resolved it, but they never notified NHTSA and they never took the problem tires off the road," says Sean Kane, a partner in Strategic Safety LLC, a motor-vehicle safety-research firm.
Mr. Kane likened the situation to Firestone. Documents show that Firestone was aware of problems with its tires years ago, but failed to notify NHTSA of its early concerns.
There are other parallels to Firestone: The Goodyear tire failures are concentrated in hot climates such as Florida and Saudi Arabia and involve vehicles with a high center of gravity and therefore a relatively higher propensity to roll over in accidents. The accidents occur after the tread and upper belt separate from the lower belt.
Firestone's recalled tires were used mainly on Ford's popular Explorer sports-utility vehicle, which -- while often considered a light truck -- is actually far lighter than the vehicles that use Goodyear's Load-Range E tires. "With Goodyear, you're really dealing with a different class of tires," said Mr. Kane of Strategic Safety. "These are tires made for heavier duty, made for a real light truck."
Oddly enough, both Firestone and Goodyear took similar steps to strengthen their tires. Goodyear eventually added the nylon layer to all its heavy-duty tires, while Firestone attempted a similar fix to its Explorer tires in Venezuela.
In the U.S., tire-industry executives have attributed accidents to drivers who they said failed to keep their tires at recommended inflation levels.