Key Group Joins Call for Wider Firestone Recall
A prominent consumer group Monday joined the call for Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. to broaden its tire recall, attacking the current plan as inadequate and warning that hundreds of thousands of Americans may still be driving on unsafe tires.
“The public can afford no further delay in getting these tires off the highway,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen and a former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government agency that is now investigating 46 deaths linked to the tires.
“There is ample evidence to show that vehicle owners with these other, non-recalled tires may be at substantial risk,” Claybrook said.
A spokeswoman for Bridgestone/Firestone defended the quality of the company’s tires and called the allegations “unsubstantiated.”
Amid a wave of lawsuits and a government inquiry, the Nashville-based company--a unit of Japanese tire maker Bridgestone Corp.--agreed to voluntarily recall about 6.5 million 15-inch tires last week.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co.--which installed the recalled tires on many of its top-selling Explorer sport-utility vehicles--released figures Monday to support its claim that most of the problems with Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT series tires are linked to a single factory and a particular tire size.
Ford said Monday that nearly 95% of the Firestone claims it reviewed between 1991 to 2000 involved 15-inch tires, rather than 16-inch models.
“The failure rates for 16-inch tires are extremely low,” said Ford spokesman Jon Harmon. “They are performing at world-class levels according to all the data we have analyzed.”
The auto maker also said that claims involving tires produced at Firestone’s Decatur, Ill., factory were up to six times higher than claims involving similar tires produced at four other plants combined. The claims involving Decatur-produced tires were highest for tires made between 1994 and 1996, when the plant was forced to use replacement workers during a union strike, according to Ford.
But consumer groups pointed to inconsistencies in the recall.
If the Decatur plant was the crux of the problem, Claybrook asked, why hasn’t Firestone recalled other tires manufactured there?
Also, Claybrook called upon Ford to explain why 16-inch tires were replaced in some foreign countries, but not in the U.S.
According to figures from NHTSA, nearly 900,000 Ford vehicles in North America have been equipped with the 16-inch ATX and Wilderness tires since 1991.
Arkansas attorney C. Tab Turner, who first sued Firestone and Ford on this issue in 1993, said he has lined up six workers from Firestone’s Wilson, N.C., factory to testify about poor conditions on the ATX line there. He would not identify them but expects them to give depositions in the fall.
Turner is affiliated with Safetyforum.com, which joined Public Citizen and the group Strategic Safety in calling Monday for a wider recall.
Representatives of unhappy Firestone tire owners who are banding together over the Internet also appeared at a news conference at Public Citizen’s Washington offices in support of a wider recall.
Bob Rolls, who helped start the owners’ Tire Action Group, towed his Ford Explorer on a flatbed from his home in suburban Silver Spring, Md., to show signs of tread separation on one of its 16-inch Firestone Wilderness tires--a model size not involved in the recall. The Explorer is “my pride and joy,” he said, but he hasn’t driven it since Aug. 3 when he noticed the tread coming off.
“Every one of these tires--there are millions of them--is an avoidable tragedy waiting to happen,” said Rolls, his chin quivering. “We’re tired of half-truths. Let’s call it what it is. We’re tired of being lied to.”
Geoffrey Coffin, a Connecticut businessman, told of driving his 6-week-old Explorer in June 1995 on a business trip to Long Island, N.Y. A tire blew out and the car rolled over three times, crashing into a tree, he said.
Coffin suffered a damaged lung and a ruptured kidney, among other injuries, he said.
He spent 14 days in the hospital. Even now, five years later, he said, “a day doesn’t go by that I’m not in pain.”
In other developments Monday:
* Standard & Poor’s lowered its long-term credit rating on Bridgestone Corp. and said further downgrades were possible because of the recall.
* New class-action suits were filed on behalf of Florida and Maryland drivers, adding to a growing number of cases against Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone, already estimated at about 100 by plaintiffs attorneys.
*
Times staff writer Terril Yue Jones in Detroit contributed to this report.
