The Irresponsibility of Firestone :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

The Irresponsibility of Firest unitaryIt was passing difficult to control the truck at the time, and I had both my wife (two months pregnant) and my 16-month-old daughter screaming and crying in a panic...My wife has actual a fear of the only vehicle we train, understandably so. She fears other hold outs may also be defective and that we may be in riskiness (Nathan). Much like the 4,300 similar complaints the National Highway Traffic refuge Administration (NHTSA) has received, this Firestone tire consumer warned the agency of the faulty product and asked it to take action. view a similar problem happening to you. While leisurely travelling down the highway, your SUV is suddenly thrown to the pavement. The tire tread on your odd rear tire separates from the steel belt, and your vehicle can not outmatch its speed of 65-mph, and crashes uncontrollably. The SUV rolls over, killing your family. Even though you complain, the NHTSA does nothing about the problem, and you identi fy about other similar accidents. On August 9, 2000, Bridgestone/Firestone, an international tire manufacturer, issued a recall of all its ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires. To date, the company has replaced 6.5 one million million million tires (Firestone death...). cut across had contracted with Firestone to supply tires for all the SUVs it produced. Together Firestone and Ford investigated the problems with the recalled tires. Despite much bickering between the two companies, the tires failed due to flaws in Firestones manufacturing and production. The NHTSA has reported a total of 148 deaths and 525 injuries involving tread separations, blowouts, and other problems with Firestone tires. The pose East has reported at least seven deaths and Venezuela has reported xlvi due to the same kind of problem (Firestone death...). From both foreign countries and the get together States, complaints state that the tires lose their casings when traveling at high speeds. The tire shape r claimed it knew nothing of the tread problems until late July, yet consumers have warned the company since the middle 1990s (Nathan). It also stated that the complaints it finally received did not upraise any red flags because in relative terms, few tires had failed less than one in every 10,000 of the 47 million ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires produced since 1991 have failed (Nathan). Most of the recalled tires came from the Decatur, Illinois plant, the main concentration of the investigation. The company claimed that a workers strike at that plant in the nineties, when replacement workers made the product, caused most of the problems.