State Farm Says It Alerted Firestone to Problem in ’97
The nation’s largest auto insurer said Tuesday that it began complaining three years ago to Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. about an unusually high accident rate involving its Firestone brand tires and took its concerns to the government last year but never got a response.
Meanwhile, the number of accidents and traffic deaths associated with the tires Firestone is recalling continued to climb Tuesday, prompting some safety organizations to repeat demands for a broader recall of the company’s light-truck and sport-utility tires.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been investigating the Firestone accidents since May 2, said it has processed 575 complaints, involving 54 deaths, that name various Firestone brand tires, including the ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT models being recalled. Eight of the fatalities occurred in California.
A spokesman for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance said the insurer noticed as early as 1997 that Firestone tires were involved in an unusually high number of accidents and started complaining about the problem to the tire maker.
Nashville-based Bridgestone/Firestone, a unit of tire maker Bridgestone Corp. of Japan, declined to comment Tuesday on State Farm’s allegations. But representatives of Ford Motor Co.--whose SUVs and other light trucks used most of the estimated 6.5 million tires being recalled--had said Sunday that they believed Firestone was aware as early as 1997 of a growing number of incidents involving tire tread separation.
State Farm spokesman Bill Sirola said that the insurer took its concerns to the government last year with a report to NHTSA, but that the agency never responded.
That comment drew a blank at NHTSA, which has been criticized for not spotting the tire problem sooner.
“That’s news to me,” said Ken Weinstein, the agency’s associate administrator for safety assurance. He supervises the Office of Defects Investigation. “They didn’t give it to me personally. It might have happened. I’m so surprised. If they gave it to us, I would have put it in my database.”
The disclosure by Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm, which insures about 20% of the drivers in the U.S., could provide more ammunition to consumer groups and personal-injury attorneys, who complain that Firestone, Ford and government investigators moved too slowly in dealing with the problem tires.
“This is yet another source of information that should have alerted Firestone,” said Washington attorney Gary Mason, who is trying to organize a class-action suit on behalf of Ford Explorer owners.
Separately Tuesday, lawyers for an Arcadia woman, whose father and a friend were killed in an accident allegedly caused by a Firestone tire tread separation in November, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Pasadena Superior Court.
The woman, Kelly Logan, was traveling with her family on the Foothill Freeway on Nov. 14 in a 1995 Ford Explorer. The SUV’s right rear tire suffered a tread separation, causing the car to veer out of control and overturn, according to the lawsuit.
On learning of the recall, Logan said she felt “glad that they did it so other people won’t get hurt by this. But it made me mad too. They could have prevented so many deaths if they had done it sooner.”
Most of the tires subject to the recall were installed as original equipment tires on 1991 and later Ford Explorers as well as on various models of Ford F-150 pickups, Mercury Mountaineers, Mazda Navajo SUVs, and Ford Ranger and Mazda B-Series mini-pickups.
Ford and Firestone would not comment on the new NHTSA numbers because they had not had time to study them. But John Lampe, executive vice president of Bridgestone/Firestone, said, “Any accident concerns me.” He said he did not consider the rising numbers unusual, though. “I think as more media attention has been made on this, more claims will become known.”
The tire models being recalled have been specifically identified in accident reports noting 43 deaths, according to data posted by NHTSA on its Web site Tuesday. In reports citing 11 additional fatalities, Firestone was cited as the tire maker, but no brand was specified. In 13 other deaths allegedly involving tire failures, the manufacturer was not stated.
When the investigation began, NHTSA had processed 90 complaints, including 30 crashes and four deaths. By Aug. 7, as retailers decided to halt sales of the tires and recall pressure mounted, NHTSA had reviewed some 270 complaints and 46 deaths. Bridgestone/Firestone, reportedly under pressure from its biggest customer, Ford Motor, finally announced a recall Aug. 9.
In what appears to substantiate claims that there is a problem with Firestone tires--although a specific flaw has yet to be identified--Ford executives said Tuesday that from 1995 to 1997 the company installed Goodyear tires on about 500,000 Explorers. There have been “virtually no tread separations” reported on the Goodyear-equipped vehicles, although the tires were similar in size and construction and were “built to the same performance requirements as the Firestone tires,” said Tom Baughman, Ford’s vehicle line director for trucks.
Also Tuesday, Firestone pledged to reimburse consumers--up to $100 per tire--for costs they incurred between Jan. 1 and Aug. 8 to replace tires subject to the recall. Terms of the reimbursement policy, which requires consumers to release their legal claims against Firestone, are outlined on the Web at https://www.firestone.com.
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Times staff writers Terril Yue Jones and Indraneel Sur and researcher Sunny Kaplan contributed to this report.
