''It doesn't provide the degree of detail and specificity.''Įven so, he said that federal investigators looking at the Firestone case were now reviewing records of fatalities in the federal database and going back to local police to seek more information about tire problems. ''It is not something that we would ever use as a first warning system,'' he said. Tyson and officials from Ford said that the fatality database was not now specific enough to draw concrete conclusions about specific mechanical defects. 6, the same day that the agency's administrator, Sue Bailey, was called before Congress to testify about the Firestone recall and the agency's role in detecting tire safety problems.īoth Mr. Rae Tyson, a spokesman from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that the release was delayed to give federal analysts time to review the data and develop their own findings. This year, they were not released until September. The federal accident files are usually compiled by the end of May and then reviewed and made final by July. The report noted that: ''None of the tires were worn down to the tread bar or to wear indicators.''Īn earlier analysis by The Times showed that a fatal Explorer accident was nearly three times more likely to involve tires than other sport utility fatal accidents. One typical accident last August killed the driver of a 1992 Explorer in New Mexico when the rubber of the Firestone tire's treads began peeling off at 70 miles an hour.Ī witness, Joe Sevier, who had just passed the Explorer, said: ''The tire separated and began throwing rubber off the road.'' In many cases the police reports examined by The Times described a high-speed rollover, produced by a separation of the tread from the tire. This count of cases would probably raise the official death count somewhat - precisely how much is unclear because some of the complaints released by the Highway Traffic Safety agency were vague, and details of others were withheld.īut if the same pattern held for all the cases, it would suggest about 78 deaths through 1999, along with an additional 21 deaths in the complaint file for this year, and additional accidents that have occurred since. Firestone officials admitted last week that the company had made ''bad tires,'' and said they were focusing on design issues, as well as manufacturing problems in Decatur.Īsked about the new federal data, Daniel Adomitis, a spokesman for Firestone, said that the company had already recognized there was a problem with its tires.īut he suggested further analysis needed to be done to examine why Ford Explorers rolled over, and he complained that Ford had declined to provide Firestone with its experience with tires produced by other manufacturers. In 1995, when many of the tires for the 1996 Explorer were being made, Firestone was enduring a bitter strike that many workers say may have compromised quality at the company's plant in Decatur, Ill. The increase simply shows that those Explorers were equipped with bad tires.'' ![]() ![]() ''You don't see a tread separation in the first year or two and then you see a sharp spike,'' he said. There were almost twice as many such accidents in Explorers as in all other sport utility vehicles built since the Explorer was introduced a decade ago, the analysis showed.Īsked about The Times's analysis, Ernie Grushz, Ford's manager of safety data analysis, said Ford's own analysis had shown that 1996 was a particularly bad year for Firestone tire manufacturing. In 1999, there were more than two and a half times the number of fatal tire-related accidents in Ford Explorers than the previous year and more than all earlier years combined. Then last year, the number and rate of tire-related fatal Explorer accidents soared. But The Times's analysis shows that the percentage of fatal Ford Explorer accidents linked to tire problems began rising as early as 1995, and continued to rise steadily each year through 1998. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is planning to release a revised count, perhaps as early as today. And because tire problems usually surface after three or four years of use, the pattern suggests that the fatality rate is likely to continue into this year. Taken together, these factors suggest that the number of deaths linked to the Firestone tires is higher than previously known. Officials of Ford Motor Company say that tires made for that model year had a particularly poor record of defects and warranty claims. ![]() At the same time, the analysis found that much of the increase in tire-related deaths could be accounted for by 1996 model Explorers equipped with Firestone tires. ![]() But in a spot check of police records and interviews with survivors, a large majority of the cases surveyed involved rollovers of Explorers with Firestone tires.
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