More Firestone Tires Pose Peril, Agency Warns
A federal safety agency warned consumers Friday that 1.4 million more Firestone tires are subject to the same potentially deadly problems that forced their manufacturer to recall 6.5 million tires last month, expanding the investigation beyond Ford vehicles to include Nissan and Chevrolet trucks.
Many of the 24 types of tires included in the warning were installed in vehicles dating to the early 1990s and are unlikely to still be in use. Nonetheless, the action by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was a blow to beleaguered Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. and could well compel the company to expand its recall as it struggles with image and labor problems.
Some of the tires included in Friday’s warning had a failure rate that exceeded “those of the recalled tires, sometimes by a large margin,” according to a NHTSA statement. “In view of the potential safety risk, NHTSA believes it is important to alert the public of its concerns now.”
NHTSA said it issued the warning after Bridgestone/Firestone refused to add the additional tire types to the recall.
Christine Karbowiak, a spokeswoman for the Nashville-based tire maker, said in a statement that the company disagrees with NHTSA’s reasoning but will offer a free inspection at any of its service centers for consumers who own the tires.
“If a customer is still concerned about their tires, we will replace the tires at no cost. . . . We will use competitors’ products if necessary,” she said.
NHTSA urged any consumers who have the tires listed in Friday’s warning to consider replacing them and retain their receipts. The agency’s internal procedures prevent it from directly ordering a recall until it has completed a laborious investigative process. However, the public warning could accomplish that same goal.
Consumer warnings from NHTSA are relatively rare and usually concern issues involving a threat of injury or death. High-profile warnings in recent years have concerned air bag hazards to children.
The move raises concerns that more kinds of Firestone tires may harbor potentially deadly flaws--as consumer groups that have been urging a wider recall contend.
The new warning was based on NHTSA’s analysis of information submitted by Firestone. The company announced Aug. 9 that it was recalling 15-inch ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires installed mainly on Ford’s best-selling Explorer sport-utility vehicles.
NHTSA officials said they had met privately Wednesday with Bridgestone/Firestone representatives and asked them to voluntarily include the additional tires in the recall. But the company formally declined to do so Thursday. At that point, the federal regulators said they could not keep silent.
Joan Claybrook, a former head of NHTSA who now directs the advocacy group Public Citizen, said she was surprised that Firestone did not go along with the request for a broader recall.
“Many of these tires are old,” she said. “It would not have been that painful.”
In a related move, NHTSA upgraded its Firestone probe from a preliminary inquiry to a full-scale defect investigation.
Included in the latest warning are Wilderness AT 16-inch tires installed on 1996-98 Ford F-150 pickups, 15-inch ATX tires on 1991-94 Nissan pickups and 15-inch ATX tires on 1991 Chevy Blazer SUVs. Twenty-one other tire models covered by the warning were installed as replacements.
“It’s quite a variety of other tires,” Claybrook said. “It certainly suggests to me that there is a design problem here.”
Most of the tires were manufactured at Firestone’s Decatur, Ill., plant, which the company has indicated may be the root of the problem. However, two of the tire types were manufactured in Oklahoma City and one at the company’s plant in Wilson, N.C. Critics of Firestone have contended that quality problems are not limited to the Decatur plant.
“This puts the ball right back in Firestone and Ford’s court,” said Sean Kane, a Virginia-based litigation consultant. “The numbers are starting to show that there are substantial numbers of tread-separation failures outside the recall.”
Helen Petrauskas, Ford’s vice president for environmental and safety engineering, said the company will look closely at NHTSA’s recommendation.
“If government safety agencies have additional data, clearly that data must be considered,” she said. “We stand ready to make every effort to work with all involved.”
The affected Nissan model is the SE 4x4 pickup; the company estimates there are fewer than 20,000 on the road today, even fewer with the original tires still on them.
“We’re telling people first to get in touch with Firestone,” said Nissan spokesman Fred Standish. “If they’re not satisfied with the response and still have concerns, they should take their vehicle to their local Nissan dealer and we will replace the tires free of charge.”
General Motors Corp. spokesman Greg Martin said about 10,000 of its Chevrolet Blazer trucks with the problem tires were sold a decade ago.
“I would imagine that 99-and-9/10% of those tires are in some scrapheap at this point,” he said.
The Firestones that GM uses on its trucks now are not among those recalled or in the warning, nor are they made in Decatur, the company said. Kane said that his own analysis of complaints to NHTSA showed that the problem goes beyond the tires included in the Aug. 9 recall.
Kane said that in 409 cases in which a tire type could be clearly identified, 299 involved failures of tires that were not included in the recall. Those incidents included at least three deaths and 25 injuries, he said.
Scores of deaths and hundreds of injuries in the United States and overseas have been attributed to Firestone tire problems. Typically, the tire treads peel off at high speeds. When startled drivers turn the wheel to maintain their heading, oversteering can precipitate a sideways skid. In a top-heavy SUV, that can end in a rollover crash.
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Times staff writer Terril Yue Jones contributed to this story.
