The unsafe-tire story actually began in 1996 when KTRK-TV in Houston revealed problems with Firestone tires. Four years later, KHOU-TV in Houston picked up the story.

The major media would not touch the story after checking with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which said it was not aware of any problem.

Reporters at USA Today did pick up the story but took it much further with database analyses and extensive investigative reporting. Reporters used physical and human sources to investigate:

• They went through every filing with the federal traffic safety administration (NHTSA), a total of 9,000 pages. They found 5,000 complaints about Firestone tires.
• They created a database of accidents and deaths that involved Firestone tires.
• They examined 2,256 pages of reports by Ford mechanics. A database from these reports revealed a pattern of tire problems that seemed to be associated with a vibration in the Ford Explorer's suspension system, indicating an impending tire tread separation.
• After examining 1,100 customer complaints, Sara Nathan spent weeks contacting hundreds of the victims of tread-separation accidents. This put a human-interest aspect to the story.

The investigation turned up 148 deaths over a 10-year period, with many hundreds of injuries.

As a result of the stories, Firestone recalled 6.5 million tires, and the Senate and House held hearings and passed a law giving the NHTSA more power to investigate safety problems in the U.S and abroad. The law states that corporate executives who conceal defects can be sent to prison for 15 years.

Here are some of the USA Today stories that exposed the problem:

Safety Groups Want SUV's Recalled Because of Tire Concerns

by Sara Nathan
USA Today

Two safety groups are asking Ford Motor to recall the 3.4 million Explorers made since 1991, saying the tread can peel off the Bridgestone Firestone tires sold on most of the popular sport-utility vehicles.

The risk of the tread separating from the tire belt is greatest in warm climates, according to the group Strategic Safety and Public Citizen.

"The tread rips off like a banana peeling, and people lose control and can have rollover accidents," says Sean Kane, a partner at Strategic Safety.

That's what happened to Matthew Hendricks, a teen in Corpus Christi, Texas, says Roger Braugh, a Corpus Christi lawyer suing the automaker. Hendricks, 17, died in 1998 after the tread came off a tire on the Ford Explorer he was driving, causing him to lose control and the SUV to roll over several times, Braugh says. Hendricks was ejected.

"They should recall the tires, and consumers should demand new tires." Braugh says.

The Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires are installed as original equipment on Ford Explorers, Rangers and F-150s and can be purchased as replacement tires for those and other vehicles. Ford said in a written statement that it is "extremely satisfied with the safety record of these vehicles" with the Firestone tires. Bridgestone Firestone said in a written statement: "We continually monitor the performance of all our tire lines, and the objective data clearly reinforces our belief that these are high quality, safe tires."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires last May after it received 90 reports of tread separation from consumers in states with warmer climates.

The agency says the reports included 30 crashes and four deaths. Most accidents occured while the vehicles were moving at between 50 and 75 miles an hour. In two cases, the tread wrapped around the rear axle, causing the wheels to stop and the vehicle to crash.

NHTSA says it sent requests for information to Ford and Bridgestone Firestone, but the companies have requested more time to comply.

Ford offered free replacement tires this spring for Explorers in Venezuela after media reports on accidents there.

Ford says the accidents occurred because the tires were either underinflated, overinflated, and/or excessively worn or damaged. And many of the accidents occurred when the vehicles were speeding at more than 100 miles an hour in extreme heat, Ford says.

The automaker said it replaced the tires in Venezuela "in the interests of customer satisfaction."

"The question is, why aren't they doing it in the U.S.?" says Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer group Public Citizen. "These are U.S. companies that have sold 3.4 million vehicles here, and there have been a significant number of deaths."

More Deaths Linked to Tires
Crash reports say treads peeled off, sometimes at 20 mph

by James R. Healy and Sara Nathan
USA Today

Millions of people in the USA are riding on tires that are the focus of a federal safety probe and that have been recalled and replaced in six other countries, according to government files.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also said Tuesday that it has reports of 21 deaths—up from just four it knew of earlier this week—and 193 crashes involving Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires. Reports of the incidents say the treads inexplicably peeled off the tire casings, causing skids.

The tires have been common for years on some pickups and sport utility vehicles. Bridgestone Firestone says it has made 48 million of the tires. It says "objective data clearly reinforces our belief that these are high-quality, safe tires." The tires have been original equipment on General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and Subaru vehicles. Most accidents reported to NHTSA involve Ford Explorer SUVs, so NHTSA included Ford in its probe.

Ford acknowledges replacing Firestone tires free on its vehicles sold in Venezuela, Ecuador, Thailand, Malaysia, Colombia and Saudi Arabia. Some tires failed in those countries. Ford, though not accepting blame, swapped tires as a "customer satisfaction issue."

In the USA, Ford "continues to monitor the performance" of Firestone-equipped models. "If something is wrong we'll make it right," says Ford spokesman Ken Zino.

Ford wouldn't explain why so many Explorers are in the crash list, and NHTSA had no explanation why Fords would crash more than others using the same tires.

Bridgestone/Firestone's list of vehicles with ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires as factory equipment includes Ford F-150 and Ranger pickups, Expedition and Explorer; Chevrolet and GMC full-size pickups; Chevy, GMC and Cadillac full-size SUVs; Nissan Frontier pickup and Pathfinder SUV; Toyota Tacoma pickup and 4Runner SUV; and Subaru Outback.

NHTSA spokesman Tim Hurd says the investigation focuses on the tires, so it would be up to Bridgestone/Firestone to do a recall, if necessary.

NHTSA files include reports of tread failure at speeds as slow as 20 miles an hour, though 55 to 75 mph is typical. Tires with less than 2,000 miles have failed, according to NHTSA's files.

Officials Have Known SUV Tire Suspicions for Decade

by James R. Healey and Sara Nathan
USA Today

The federal government has known for at least 10 years of suspicions that certain Firestone tires suddenly lost their tread and caused crashes, according to documents on file at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The documents also show:

• Firestone parent Bridgestone/Firestone has been actively investigating the allegations since at least 1992.
• Ford Motor, on whose vehicles most of the tires are mounted, has received complaints about the tires' failure for at least that long.

No investigation into the tires' safety was begun until May, when NHTSA received a number of complaints almost all at once. Those appear to have been triggered by a Houston television report on local crashes seemingly linked to Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness light-truck tires.

Most of those complaints were from Texans, leading NHTSA to conclude that the report by KHOU-TV, Channel 11 in Houston, made people there aware of the potential problem.

The probe is too new to have discovered why treads suddenly separate. Heat and poor tire maintenance have been suggested. Not so says Dick Baumgardner, who worked as a Firestone tire engineer for 27 years and now testifies in tire lawsuits as a private consultant. He has said in court that the Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires lack nylon caps between their steel belts and the rubber to keep the belts from sawing through the tread. He says such caps are common and would cost $1 each.

Ford's mum on the investigation, and Bridgestone says product liability lawyers are whipping up complaints.

More than 100 lawsuits are pending, says Sean Kane, partner at Strategic Safety, which does research for lawyers.

One of those involves Blaine "Cam" Webb, who died in December when the tread came off the left-rear tire of his Explorer at 70 miles an hour on Interstate 95 near Cocoa, Fla.

"This 31-year-old guy driving a new vehicle on a clear day with his seat belt on had this catastrophic accident and left his wife with three kids to raise," says his family's attorney, Charles Roberts. Melissa Webb says she tells strangers driving Explorers "to get their tires changed. I feel like I'm saving their lives."

Documents Imply Firestone Knew of Tire Trouble '94
Also, testimony shows execs talked of problems in '97

by James R. Healy
USA Today

Bridgestone/Firestone was tracking problems with its Firestone ATX tires as long ago as 1994, documents show, and a recently retired Bridgestone/Firestone official swears in a lawsuit deposition that top executives, including the CEO, were discussing the matter at quarterly meetings, at least since 1997.

In sworn testimony and public statements, Bridgestone/Firestone executives have said the company wasn't aware of potentially fatal tread-separation problems until July, just before the Aug. 9 recall of 6.5 million ATX and Wilderness AT tires. A federal safety probe that began May 2 links Firestone tires to at least 101 deaths in the U.S.

The information also challenges Bridgestone/Firestone claims that whatever warning flags existed within the company were cached in the company's finance office, useless to others who might have sounded an alarm.

Bridgestone/Firestone internal documents, submitted as part of four congressional hearings and a safety investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, show concern within the company for years.

But when the recall was announced in August, tire company officials said they were reacting to a July analysis of Firestone data by Ford Motor, the biggest user of the recalled tires.

Tread-separation problems "only became apparent this year when we were looking particularly in the July and August time period, doing the analysis, some of which has been referred to here by Ford," Gary Crigger, Bridgestone/Firestone executive vice president, said in testimony Sept. 6 before a U.S. Senate subcommittee.

Had Firestone acted sooner, "so many more people, including my son, would still be alive," says Vickie Hendricks of Corpus Christi, Texas. Her son Matthew, 18, died in January 1988 when his Ford Explorer rolled over four times after the tread peeled from the left rear Firestone ATX tire. The tire is among those recalled.

An indication that tread separation was widely discussed at Bridgestone/Firestone comes in a Friday deposition of Robert Martin, who retired as vice president of quality assurance in May and is employed by the company on special projects.

Martin said in the deposition that claims data showing tread-separation problems were presented to most departments and to Masatoshi Ono, CEO and chairman of U.S. operations and executive vice president of the Japanese parent company, Bridgestone.

Claims refer to money paid for property damage and personal injury caused when tires fail. That's different from money spent on warranties.

Martin: "The only place the claims data (were) ever discussed was in the sales CEO meeting." He described that as a gathering at least quarterly of "the senior management group, and you had the financial group, you had the planning group. The quality group. Sometimes PR, marketing."

Asked by Tampa attorney Omar Medina whether Ono attended discussions of the claims data, Martin, who said he was not at all of the meetings, replied, "Yes, sir." Asked whether Ono attended between '97 and '99, Martin said, "I'm sure he did." Medina, summarizing, said to Martin: "You said that beginning in about 1997, 1998, the discussion regarding these tread-belt separations and the claims data became more frequent at these meetings."

"That's correct," Martin responded.

Martin, reached at his home in Brentwood, Tenn., Tuesday, said, "There's more to it than that. They didn't ask me why these tires separate. I'm not prepared to say there were tread separations. You guys get this all out of context. I don't appreciate you having my deposition, and I'm not going to talk to you."

Medina is suing Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford on behalf of the estate of Kelli Gillmore. The Texas woman died June 4,1999, when the tread separated from the left rear Firestone ATX tire on her 1996 Ford Explorer, which left the road and overturned, also injuring her two young children.

Bridgestone/Firestone spokeswoman Anitra Budd discounted the importance of the claims discussions Martin cited. She said there was no meeting solely about tread-separation claims. The topic "would have come up in discussion in various meetings, but it wasn't where it was (the main) topic of discussion."

At a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Sept. 6 chaired by Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., asked, "When did the red flag go up with Firestone/Bridgestone?"

Robert Wyant, the man who replaced Martin as Bridgestone/Firestone vice president for quality assurance, replied, "The decision was made on Aug. 8, and the announcement was made on Aug. 9."

Crigger, the executive vice president, told the same subcommittee that the company acted as soon as it knew. "Only after we got into this in more depth, certainly after we saw claims, particularly the serious injury claims mounting this year, did we begin to collect information of all kinds. And, yes, we analyzed, along with Ford, information associated with the claims."

Bridgestone/Firestone did not respond to a request to talk with executives.

Ford Motor was Firestone's biggest customer, fitting the tires that now have been recalled as standard equipment on millions of Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer sport-utility vehicles. Ford analyzed the tire company's data in July.

Information from the deposition drew an angry response from one congresswoman Tuesday.

"I consider it to be more evidence that much earlier than this summer they knew they had a serious problem, and they were not forthcoming with the facts," said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. Two people and their unborn baby died in her district in a May Firestone-related accident, and she was an aggressive subcommittee questioner. "They are not being forthcoming with what they knew and when they knew it. They were not thinking about it from a public safety point of view, which they should have done."

Tauzin allowed that "people who testified may not have had personal knowledge." But he added, "I'm convinced that someone at Firestone knew, and I'm very suspicious that someone at Ford knew. They knew they had a problem, and they tried to fix it. But they never informed anyone so lives could be saved."

The document that dates the company's information to 1994 is among Firestone internal papers submitted as part of NHTSA's probe into whether the recall should include other type and sizes of tires.

That document is an analysis of which light-truck tires were causing the most property damage and personal injury when the tires failed.

The document shows that the number of claims for reimbursement involving ATX tires zoomed to 76 in 1994, accounting for 43% of the claims among light-truck tires. That was up from 19 ATX claims in 1993, representing 13% of the total that year.

And the jump was not an isolated spike, yearly Firestone analyses through 1999 show. From 1994 on, ATX continued to be over-represented in the company's light truck tire liability claims, eventually accounting for more than half.

"They had to have known, and they totally disregarded all the statistics they had," says Irene Dickson of Carson. Okla. She sued Firestone in 1995 over tread separation after her husband, James, and grandson, Cody, 6, were killed June 10,1994. The tread came off the left rear ATX tire on his Explorer, and the SUV crashed.

Preparing the lawsuit, her lawyer discovered at least a dozen other lawsuits and accident reports involving Firestone tread separation. "They had to have known the tire-manufacturing process was extremely lacking, but even after that, nothing was done to correct it," Dickson says. She also blames Ford, claiming the Explorer is unstable.

Lawsuits, liability claims and accident reports were considered beside the point, Crigger told Congress: "Claims and lawsuits are not considered to be representative throughout a line. They are considered to be individual cases that occur for a variety of reasons. So they have never been part of performance evaluation.

"As I said earlier, I wish they had (been) here, because that's the part of the analysis that turned us into looking at this particular problem and taking the action that we did."

Claims and lawsuits are irrelevant, agreed Bridgestone/Firestone vice President John Lampe at a congressional subcommittee hearing Sept. 21. "We've used and had access to that claims data for a number of years," he said. But, "We've never used it as a performance measure for tires."

The executives said a valid yardstick is warranty claims, known as adjustments. Those showed no problem, they have said.

Also showing concerns dating back to 1996:

An unlabeled chart among the documents Firestone submitted to NHTSA is an examination of treadbelt-separation problems by production year "through 8/15/96." It includes handwritten notes that the return rate for tires built at Firestone's Decatur, Ill., factory in 1995 and '96 "looks bad" on tires identified as LT235/75R-15, even though it had improved from tires built there in 1991 through '94. Decatur is the source of many of the bad tires.

On the same page, another handwritten note concerning LT265/75R-16 tires says the tread-separation problem is "really bad."

(This story was also reported by Greg Farrell, Earle Eldridge, Del Jones, Sara Nathan, Thomas A. Fogarty and Barbara Hansen.)