1990 жылдардағы Ford Explorer және Firestone доңғалағындағы қауіпсіздік дауы

1990s safety scandal involving Ford Explorer SUVs fitted with Firestone tires
The Firestone and Ford tire controversy of the 1990s saw hundreds of people die in automobile crashes caused by the failure of Firestone tires installed on light trucks and SUVs made by Ford Motor Company. Unusually high failure rates of P235/75R15 ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires installed on the first generation Ford Explorer and similar vehicles caused crashes that killed 238 people and injured around 500 others in the United States alone; more died in other countries. The revelations halved the market value of Firestone parent company Bridgestone, which fired or accepted the resignation of several executives and closed the Decatur, Illinois, factory where the tires were manufactured. Lawyers and traffic safety researchers decided not to contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) because they lacked confidence in the agency and feared that an investigation might conclude that there were no defects, thereby compromising existing personal injury lawsuits. All but 13 of the 271 known deaths from these tires took place after 1996. Firestone sent several engineers to inspect the tires and concluded that normal passenger tires were being used in heavy conditions, on dirt roads, off road, and under heavy loads. Firestone replaced those tires with heavier duty tires. In July 1998, Samuel Boyden, a researcher for State Farm Insurance, received a call from a claims handler asking for information about tread separation in Firestone tires. Boyden subsequently found 21 crashes caused by tread separation and forwarded the information to NHTSA. In 1999, he found an additional 30 cases which he also forwarded to NHTSA. In 1998, Ford began replacing Firestone tires in Venezuela, where 46 deaths had occurred, according to documents uncovered by Sean Kane, a researcher at Strategic Safety Consulting. A Ford dealer in Saudi Arabia noticed high failure rates of Firestone tires in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait starting in 1997 and in July 1999 began replacing Firestone tires on unsold Ford Explorers and to offer a 75% discount for replacement tires when customers came in for maintenance. Ford and Firestone began testing tires in late 1997 or 1998 and began a limited recall in the Middle East, Venezuela, Malaysia, and Thailand in 1999 and the spring of 2000 but did not notify NHTSA. KHOU was overwhelmed by phone calls from concerned citizens and started directing callers to NHTSA. In 2000, Clarence Ditlow, executive director for the Center for Auto Safety, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, "Emerging information shows that both Ford and Firestone had early knowledge of tread separation in Firestone Tires fitted to Ford Explorer vehicles but at no point informed NHTSA of their findings". Firestone had more information about tire failures than Ford did because of warranty claims, but Firestone never acted on this information because it always blamed consumers for not maintaining their tires correctly or operating their vehicles in extreme environments, leading to these failures. When Ford and NHTSA looked into concerns about tire failures or rollovers, they consulted consumer complaints to NHTSA's toll free hotline. The consumer complaints did not reflect the size of the problem because attorneys and their clients had almost completely stopped using the hotline to report tire failures or other complaints. This became a formal investigation on May 2 (PE00020). Ford argued that the Explorer was no more dangerous than any other SUV and that the accident rate for Explorers with Goodyear tires was far lower than for Explorers with Firestone tires. Some outside observers argued that both parties were to blame:

Ford designed the first generation Explorer by mounting an SUV cabin on a Ford Ranger undercarriage. This cut production costs because Ford could use existing facilities, parts, and robots. But the extra upper cabin weight on the pickup chassis created a vehicle with a higher center of gravity that was more likely to roll over in an accident. It was also more likely to sway during sharp turns because it used the same leaf spring suspension as the Ranger. They did not widen the wheelbase, which would have required a substantial redesign. One consequence of lowering the tire pressure is increased tire temperatures which could lead to a tire failure. Firestone warrantied these tires at 26 psi for 11 years. the first generation Explorer had one of the lowest fuel economy ratings of any SUV sold in the United States, due at least in part to Ford's recommended tire pressure. While designing the second generation Explorer, Ford made two changes to reduce weight and improve fuel economy. First, Ford replaced the Twin I Beam suspension with a lighter weight short and long arm suspension, but did not lower the engine. This raised the Explorer's center of gravity, making it more prone to rolling in an accident or sharp turn. Second, Ford reduced the amount of material in the roof. When the new model went on sale in 1995, it was discovered that this lighter roof was so weak that it would collapse under the weight of an overturned Explorer if the windshield were smashed in, as often happened in rollover accidents. After Ford Motor Company voluntarily recalled 13 million Firestone tires on May 21, 2001, Firestone requested that NHTSA investigate the handling and safety of Ford Explorers following a tread separation. Firestone argued that the Explorer is poorly designed and exhibits dangerous oversteer in the foreseeable event that a tire fails while driving. Firestone hired a consulting engineer to analyze the performance of the Ford Explorer and other SUVs during a tread separation, this report showed that the Explorer had a greater tendency to oversteer following a tread separation than other SUVs. NHTSA examined this report as well as real world accident data and data provided by Ford concerning the design of the Explorer and denied Firestone's request. NHTSA stated that "[t]he many crashes following tread separations of tires on these vehicles that are documented in the Firestone claims database and that have been reported to ODI by consumers and others demonstrate that such a tire failure can lead to loss of control, particularly when it is a rear tire that fails and the vehicle is being driven at high speed. However, the fact that a vehicle exhibits linear range oversteer characteristics following a rear tire tread separation does not, in itself, indicate that the vehicle contains a safety related defect. Moreover, the data available to ODI does not indicate that Explorers are more likely to exhibit linear range oversteer characteristics following a rear tire tread separation than many of their peers."

The tires that were involved in these accidents were P235/75R15 ATX and ATX II tires and P235/75R15 and P255/70R16 Wilderness AT tires. These tires were installed as OEM equipment on the Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer, Ford Bronco, Ford Ranger, Ford F series pickup trucks, Mazda B series pickup trucks, and Mazda Navajo between 1991 and 2000. ATX tires were originally developed in the late 1980s for use on Ford light trucks and SUVs and were first installed on Ford trucks and SUVs in 1991. The ATX II was designed to improve the ATX's ride and the fuel economy of the Explorer. which produced tires with a significantly higher failure rate than the other two factories that manufactured these same tire models, Wilson, North Carolina and Joliette, Quebec. Wilderness AT tires manufactured before May 1998 had higher failure rates regardless of where they were manufactured and had a safety related design defect according to NHTSA. where the tire tread peeled off from the body of the tire. Tread separation, due to the interaction of steel and rubber tire elements, has been a challenge in radial tire design since their development by Michelin in 1946. The failure of the subject tires "begin as belt edge separation at the edge of the second belt. This is the area of highest strain in a steel belted radial tire, primarily due to the structural discontinuity created by the abrupt change in modulus from steel to rubber." The longer it takes the tread to separate the more the vehicle pulls in that direction.

There were several primary causes for the tread separations: tire age, manufacturing facility, operating temperature, tire design, as well as labor and management problems in Bridgestone/Firestone and at the Decatur, Illinois factory.

The belt wedge and skim rubber compounds change as they age. Skim rubber is a thin strip of rubber sandwiched between the inner and outer belts and the belt wedge is a thin strip of rubber installed along the outer edge of the tire between the two steel belts and in the area of highest stress on the tire. These changes reduce the ability of the tire to resist crack growth and belt separation. That is, once a crack formed within the tire, the crack would spread more readily than on comparable tires from the Joliette or Wilson factories. Researchers also tested belt adhesion strength by measuring the force that it would take to peel a strip of the second belt from the rest of the tire. ATX and ATX II tires manufactured at Decatur had lower belt adhesion strength than the same tires manufactured at Joliette or Wilson. However, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that this would weaken a tire or lead to a premature failure.

A tire's operating temperature will increase with higher vehicle load, speed, air temperature, and with lower tire inflation pressure. The combination of inflation pressure, speed, and vehicle load could increase the tire temperature as much as 122 degrees F above the ambient air temperature.

Bridgestone purchased Firestone in 1988 to compete with other large multinational tire companies and took on a considerable amount of debt to complete the purchase and upgrade Firestone's manufacturing facilities. At that time Firestone was losing a considerable amount of money each year which put a drain on Bridgestone's profits. Bridgestone pressured Firestone to cut manufacturing and labor costs to improve revenues. Critics and workers claim that this led Firestone to cut corners on production and to allow substandard tires to pass inspection that should have been rejected. This also led Firestone to pressure workers to accept new labor contracts that reduced pay and benefits and increased the hours that its factories were operating. In a deposition retired Firestone workers testified that quality control problems at the Decatur factory could have led workers to manufacture defective tires. One worker stated that, despite getting a company discount, he'd stopped purchasing Firestone tires years before the crisis developed because of quality control problems. Others stated that they had to inspect as many as 100 tires per hour which they believed were far too many tires to do an adequate job; that they rolled unvulcanized tire carcasses, also called a "green tire", across the factory floor which could allow debris from the floor to end up inside a completed tire; Firestone claimed that these were disgruntled workers who quit after a bitter strike. "We let the U. S. unit use its own culture. There was an element of mistake in that." during a time of labor unrest and a strike against Firestone carried out by the United Rubber Workers (URW) and the United Steel Workers (USW). By April 1994, the existing labor contract ended and workers continued to work at the factory until the URW called a general strike in July at Decatur and four other Firestone facilities. Almost immediately Firestone began hiring replacement workers at all their facilities and by January 1995 Firestone had hired 2,300 replacement workers who were paid thirty percent less. Over time union workers started to cross the picket line and by May 1995 there were 1,048 replacement workers and 371 permanent workers at Decatur. At that time the URW voted to unconditionally end the strike to block Firestone from hiring even more replacement workers and then holding a union decertification election. While the strike ended the labor negotiations continued. In July 1995 the URW had run out of money and was absorbed by the USW. During the time period from May 1995 and December 1996 union workers worked alongside non union replacements. Labor negotiations between Firestone and the USW continued but many union workers could not return to work because their jobs had been replaced. The union described that time period as "brutal."

On August 17, 1999, Ford in Saudi Arabia began replacing Firestone tires on unsold Ford Explorers and to offer steep discounts on replacement tires to customers who returned to Ford dealers for regular maintenance. While this was not officially a recall Ford still replaced Firestone tires on 6,800 Ford Explorers and Mercury Mountaineers. In May 2000, Ford recalled 150,000 Firestone tires on Explorers in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. In August 2000 Bridgestone/Firestone issued a recall in Venezuela of 62,000 Venezuelan made Firestone tires. Firestone had produced 14.4 million tires that were covered by this recall but it was estimated that only 6.5 million remained in service. This recall removed all remaining Wilderness AT tires that were manufactured prior to May, 1998. NHTSA concluded that the rubber wedge between the outer edge of the two belts was not thick enough on Wilderness AT tires and not strong enough to resist crack formation and growth. One of the tires was offered for sale as new at a used tire retail shop. The large majority of accidents took place in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. An additional 46 people were killed in Venezuela. Ford's own financial statements indicate that it spent $590 million to settle personal injury and class action lawsuits. In 2000 Firestone was served with 413 individual lawsuits in state and federal courts. By July 2002 Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone had settled more than 600 cases. In 2003, Firestone settled a class action lawsuit by agreeing to pay $15.5 million for consumer education focusing on tire safety and $19 million in legal fees and $2,500 each to 45 plaintiffs. In 2005 Firestone paid Ford $240 million to settle claims related to the recall. Ford and Firestone worked to settle cases out of court to avoid punitive damages and were paying between $4 million and $8 million to settle cases involving fatalities and between $12 million to $16 million to settle cases of paralysis. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that both Ford and Firestone knew of the dangers but did nothing, and that Ford knew that the Explorer was highly prone to rollovers. Firestone argued that Ford's recommended inflation pressure of 26 psi was too low and should have been 30 psi, and that the Explorer was an especially dangerous vehicle prone to rollovers.

Congress began hearings in September 2000 to find out why it took so long for NHTSA to discover these tire defects and why Ford and Firestone were aware of tire failures as early as 1996 but never reported the information to NHTSA. The investigation led Congress to pass the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act or TREAD Act on October 11, 2000 which was signed into law on November 1.

Relations between Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone deteriorated after NHTSA began investigating the tire failures in May 2000. Ford first accused Firestone of withholding data that Ford needed to determine which tires might be unsafe. Firestone then accused Ford of withholding safety data concerning the design of the Explorer. After Firestone agreed to the initial recall of 14.4 million tires on August 9, 2000, NHTSA continued to push Firestone to recall all ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires regardless of where they were manufactured. Ford executives were concerned that NHTSA might decide that the Wilderness AT tires would not meet future safety standards and decided to recall these tires on their own. The letter included accusations that the Ford Explorer was unsafe and called on NHTSA to investigate design flaws in the SUV. In January 2001, the CEO and president of Bridgestone, Yoichiro Kaizaki, resigned and was replaced by Shigeo Watanabe. The bitter public fight between Ford and Firestone was also a contributing factor in Ford's decision to fire Jacques Nasser in November 2001. Nasser was replaced by William Clay Ford, Jr., the great grandson of Henry Ford, and Harvey S. Firestone, the founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.

Firestone's Decatur plant was closed in December 2001 and all 1,500 employees were laid off. Firestone cited a decline in consumer demand for Firestone tires and the age of the Decatur plant as the reasons for closing that facility. It is estimated that closing the Decatur plant cost Bridgestone/Firestone $210 million. and Ford Motor Company $530 million. Bridgestone's market price dropped by 50% and the resulting restructuring cost Bridgestone $2 billion. In 2001, Ford recorded a loss of $5.5 billion.