September 12, 2014
On a sunny June day, Kathy Ruginis, of Bristol, RI, had a low-speed Unintended Acceleration event in a 2010 Corolla, as she attempted to park. The car had already been remedied under the floor mat entrapment and sticky accelerator recalls, and presumably was as safe as a babe in its mother’s arms. Ruginis was making […]
August 25, 2014
NHTSA’s tinkering with the foundation of the tire recall system, but we doubt it will do anything to make it stronger. The proposed changes to the Tire Identification Number regulations will make things less confusing for manufacturers and NHTSA – consumers and tire technicians that use the TIN to determine if tires are recalled or […]
August 15, 2014
On June 8, Cynthia Martin and Richard Blaine Markland of Dayton, Ohio, were southbound on I-93 in Ashland, New Hampshire, when the sedan left the roadway and struck a guardrail. Those steel rails lining the highway are designed to execute a complex task: keep the vehicle from leaving the roadway without deflecting the striking vehicle […]
July 25, 2014
It’s not often we encourage our readers to read a trade journal article, but a recent commentary in Tire Review by Editor Jim Smith is a go-to. The article is shockingly honest and puts the brakes on the industry’s claim of victory following NHTSA’s announcement that it wouldn’t pursue a tire aging standard. Smith also […]
July 18, 2014
One Ms. Marianne Karth of the Truck Safety Coalition and 11,000 signatories have succeeded where the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – with all its fancy-pants testing – and the Canadians – with their much tougher standard – had failed, persuading the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to initiate a rulemaking to upgrade the rear […]
July 17, 2014
In December 2009, as Toyota faced increasing scrutiny from Congress and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the wake of the horrific unintended acceleration crash in that killed California Highway Patrolman Mark Saylor, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law, the automaker’s image-makers were prepared to go on the offensive. According to an April 2013 article […]
July 14, 2014
NHTSA to Initiate Consumer Awareness Campaign on Tire Age – No Standard Needed. No surprise that NHTSA isn’t going to regulate tire age – but now that agency plans to initiate a consumer awareness campaign about tire aging after years of research data showing that aging can present a safety problem particularly in the high […]
NHTSA-watchers know that it sometimes takes a lot to pique the curiosity of the Office of Defects Investigations. Take Takata airbags that explode, shooting shrapnel at hapless drivers. This defect, first surfaced in 2008, when Honda announced a major recall. It has returned to the news pages in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013 as Honda […]
We’re all familiar with the Friday afternoon news dump – release something controversial at close of business on the last day of the week. Don’t leave reporters much time for digging or tracking down interview subjects, and hope everyone is too busy livin’ for the weekend to pay attention. The holiday news dump is a […]
June 12, 2014
Earlier this month, the Goodyear legal team was prepared to argue before a judge in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas – in essence – that a 2007 Customer Satisfaction campaign to replace 400,000 P215/70R14 tries sold in the U.S. under 23 different names was confidential business information.
This assertion was never put to the test in court. But it’s another one of Goodyear’s litigation tactics designed to turn the discovery process into the two-dimensional version of a waterboarding. Delay, delay, delay. Deny, deny, deny. Goodyear is all about full-throated declarations about the non-existence of evidence and its legal team does not flinch in making them to a judge. In Walden v. Goodyear, Safety Research & Strategies obtained non-existent documents via garden-variety research methods and if you want to read them, click here.
The claim arose in Walden v. Goodyear, a case that involved the catastrophic failure of a Douglas Xtra Trac P215 70/R14. On July 26, 2010, Cynthia Eure was driving her van westbound on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when her right rear tire suffered a tread separation. The vehicle departed the highway and rolled over. Five-year-old Tashi Walden was ejected and died of his injuries; two other passengers in the van were injured, but survived. Eure’s failed tire was among those that are part of the customer satisfaction campaign.