Goodyear to Replace Tires on Large Vans

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. said Friday that it will replace some 200,000 heavy-duty tires on 15-passenger vans in the wake of a federal investigation into accidents caused by the tires losing their treads. At least 11 people died in the accidents.

Goodyear maintains that the tires are safe, but said it will replace them because of the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration’s warning that the vans have a higher risk of rolling over when fully loaded than do smaller vehicles.

“It’s a proactive, voluntary replacement program, done out of concern for the NHTSA advisory on 15-passenger vans and the potential for tread separations,” said Goodyear spokesman Chuck Sinclair. “It has not been determined that there is a higher incidence of tread separations” with the tires, known as Load Range E tires, Sinclair said.

NHTSA issued a consumer advisory in April about 15-passenger vans, “alerting [drivers] to the fact that these vehicles have a much higher likelihood of rollover when loaded with passengers,” agency spokesman Rae Tyson said.

“We found people were not aware of the different handling characteristics,” Tyson said.

The Times reported in October 2000 that a number of fatal accidents involved Goodyear Load Range E tires that had lost their treads and that Goodyear was not taking action on the tires.

The next day Goodyear informed NHTSA of the tires’ involvement in the crashes, and the agency opened a defect investigation into Load Range E tires the following month.

Goodyear’s move Friday was the latest in a series of steps taken by manufacturers to address tire failures that made headlines after the extensive recall and replacement of Firestone tires in the last year and a half.

Load Range E tires were involved in 133 crashes of the large vans, which resulted in 11 known deaths and 133 injuries, Goodyear’s Sinclair said. The vans often carry school groups, such as athletic and debate teams.

Overall, NHTSA has tallied 18 fatalities and 158 injuries in 86 crashes involving Load Range E tires in all vehicles.

But Sinclair said analysis of a number of tires that failed showed “the tread separations were caused by something external to the tire,” such as under-inflation, overloading, damage from impacts or water seeping through punctures and rusting the steel belts.

With Goodyear’s decision to replace the tires, NHTSA will drop its defect investigation, Tyson said.

It is common for manufacturers to agree to replace products under investigation before a formal “finding of defect” is reached, which would probably result in a mandatory recall.

Thirty-one lawsuits have been filed against Goodyear relating to Load Range E tread separations, 12 of them involving 15-passenger vans, Sinclair said. Some were settled out of court, others resolved in court and some are pending, but Sinclair said he didn’t have a breakdown.

Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear has produced more than 28 million Load Range E tires since the early 1990s. They are used on large passenger and cargo vans, ambulances, large pickup trucks, trailers and shuttle buses used by hotels and car rental agencies.

The replacement program covers 16-inch Load Range E tires produced from 1996 to 2000, Sinclair said.

Tires made in 2001 were not included because a design change that added two layers of nylon capping to the tires was complete by then.

Goodyear will contact registered owners of such vans, produced by General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler, to replace the tires at Goodyear’s expense.

The move is similar to but on a much smaller scale than Bridge stone/Firestone Inc.’s decision in August 2000 to replace 6.5 million tires that showed a tendency to lose their treads at high speeds.

Ford said in May 2001 that it would replace an additional 13 million Firestone tires on its vehicles that the auto maker said showed a risk of losing their treads. The Firestone tires involved have been linked to at least 271 deaths.