Despite one of the largest tyre recalls in decades, it is being claimed that defective Firestone ATX and Wilderness AT spare tyres remain in circulation and continue to cause devastating rollover crashes.
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It is also prompting calls for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate the effectiveness of the consumer replacement programs in 2000 and 2001.
Sean E. Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, the Enriquez family of Deltona, Florida and the families of three other victims have requested that NHTSA work with Firestone and Ford to launch another consumer notification program to ensure that the defective spare tyres are removed.
Reports filed by Firestone and Ford to NHTSA indicate that approximately 12m of the more than 20m defective tyres that were in use were captured by the recalls. Spare tyres were often forgotten in the initial drive to replace the four in-service tyres.
In subsequent years, it is claimed that the defective spares have been passed along in used-vehicle sales and put in service with catastrophic results.
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By GlobalData“Even though millions of defective tyres were collected, there were potentially millions of tyres that weren’t — and these campaigns were so huge, the number of uncaptured tyres is bigger than the number of tyres retrieved in most recalls,” says Kane. “While we don’t know how many spares are out there, the number is potentially significant. We’ve personally spoken to Ford Explorer owners who unknowingly still had these recalled spares under their trucks. Each tyre that’s still out there represents another potential human tragedy.”
Michael Enriquez, 27, suffered permanent injuries in May 2005, when the Firestone ATX P235/75R15 on his 1993 Ford Explorer experienced a tread separation and overturned on a Florida highway. Mr Enriquez had only owned the vehicle for six months when the accident occurred. Mr. Enriquez, now a quadriplegic, resides in a rehabilitation facility where he is dependent upon a ventilator to breathe.
“Michael now knows that this accident would never have occurred had the ATX recall been effective in capturing spare tyres and had the manufacturers simply placed a clear and unambiguous expiration date on the tyre,” says Paul Byron, an attorney representing the Enriquez family.
“Michael and his family sincerely hope that the suffering they have endured is not needlessly borne by other people.”
In August 2000, and again in June and October 2001, the Ford Motor Company and Bridgestone/Firestone conducted massive campaigns to retrieve some 20 million P235/75R15 ATX and 15, 16 and 17-inch Wilderness AT tyres after a federal investigation determined that the tyres were prone to tread separations that officially claimed more than 270 lives in rollover accidents, mostly involving Ford Explorers.
According to independent research conducted by Safety Research & Strategies, there are many reasons why the recalled tyres are still in consumers’ hands. For one, it says there was confusion among vehicle owners about whether the spares were covered under the recalls.
The firms also says that massive shortages created by three separate replacement programs also prompted some dealerships and tyre centers to focus on the four in-service tires first. Many consumers assumed that the spares were changed as well, it says.
