Goodyear has agreed to recall more than 173,000 intended for commercial delivery vehicles and RVs nearly two decades after the last one was manufactured. The company’s G159 tires have been under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since December of 2017 and the recall comes in the wake of years of lawsuits alleging the rubber contributed to a series of fatal accidents dating back to 1998.
Despite no new claims having launched in years, court orders and settlement agreements delayed an order to make corporate data pertaining to the tire-buying public for five full years. The NHTSA didn’t even launch a formal investigation until late in 2017, followed by the recent announcement that the agency has pushed Goodyear into a recall for a tire that ended production during the Bush administration.
Manufactured between 1996 to 2003, the tires were eventually supplanted by the G159A after criticisms began to turn into lawsuits. According to the Associated Press, some of the initial lawsuits alleged that the tires were designed specifically for delivery trucks and were never intended for use by recreational vehicles traveling long distances at sustained highway speeds. Though the real issue seems to be that Goodyear was repeatedly accused of intentionally trying to obfuscate the matter while hiding any internal data that would support those claims via settlement agreements.
It wasn’t clear how many potential fatalities the G159 tires were involved in until after the NHTSA launched its investigation. By 2018, the number was estimated to be 95.
From AP:
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., based in Akron, Ohio, denied that the tires have a safety defect and said Tuesday that few, if any, are still on the road. The company said it’s doing the recall to address risks that happen when the tires are underinflated or overloaded on motorhomes.
“This tire hasn’t been made since 2003, it consistently met Goodyear’s demanding safety standards, and we have not received an injury claim related to the tire’s use on a Class A motorhome in more than 14 years,” Goodyear said in a prepared statement.
Documents show that the government safety agency sent Goodyear a letter requesting a recall of the 22.5-inch diameter tires on Feb. 22 of this year, and the company declined the request on March 8. But Goodyear later agreed to the recall “to address concerns that some of these tires may still be in the marketplace or in use.”
NHTSA must hold a public hearing and then go to court to force a company to do a recall.
Considering how few are probably left on the road, Goodyear has opted to replace G159 tires with a newer model at no cost to RV owners. Those using the tire on other vehicles will be allowed to exchange them for $500 (which wouldn’t quite cover the cost of the newer G159A).
But it’s unlikely to get a lot of takers as anybody who is keeping a set of 19-year-old tires on their vehicle has probably been killed already. Joking aside, rolling around on a set of rubber that’s old enough to drink in some countries is a terrible idea and it’s doubtful there will be many people taking advantage of this particular recall. Goodyear even noted that the RV companies that used the G159 as factory rubber aren’t even in business anymore — making it difficult for it to acquire the relevant registration data as a way of contacting impacted owners. It also added that they would have been the ones responsible for communicating to customers what the appropriate load limits should be.
Meanwhile, the NHTSA is making itself look busy by issuing statements to the public to check if their RV or delivery vehicle uses G159 tires sized for a 22.5-inch rim. It said it believes the units yield a comparatively high failure rate vs similar tires — though just about every tire their age probably would at this point.
“If their vehicle has these tires, they should have this recall completed as soon as possible,” the NHTSA stated.
I’m not sure what the big takeaway for this one is beyond widespread embarrassment. Assuming the tires were bad news from the start, Goodyear does seem to have gone well out of its way to hide any data that would back up assertions the G159 was dangerous. Meanwhile, the government seemed to be largely incapable or disinterested in taking the regulatory actions necessary to get them off the road in a timely fashion. Again, the NHTSA’s formal investigation didn’t really pick up steam until 2018 and only just managed to result in a comprehensive recall for a bunch of tires that aren’t even in use anymore.
[Image: GVLR/Shutterstock]
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Scratching my head here because I thought rubber has a limited lifespan like less than 10 years. One would think nobody is even using these tires nowbecause they long since failed due to cracking and failing dry rubber.
Well, you’re right, though if you store the tires in climate-controlled conditions, they may last longer. But it’s not a good idea to drive on 19-year-old tires if you can help it.
When I came across the NHTSA release, I originally assumed the production dates were a typo. I’ve never heard of anyone running tires that old outside of Cuba.
“But it’s unlikely to get a lot of takers as anybody who is keeping a set of 19-year-old tires on their vehicle has probably been killed already. Joking aside…”
Try making that crack to the families of the 95 victims of Goodyear’s faulty design and subsequent obfuscation.
GM side saddle fuel tanks: 150 – 2000
GM ignition switch: 124
Firestone 500 tires: 119
Goodyear tires: 95
Pinto fires: 27
GM side saddle fuel tanks = who cares, because we love trucks.
Pinto has been the butt of jokes and misinformation for decades, and the GM ignition switch received inordinate attention around here, but this story gets a dismissal because Big Government dragged its feet.
Better to let mfrs do what they want, because Big Government is bad and/or incompetent. Unless the mfr produces gasoline, then we want Joe to meddle with prices.
Your report on this is disgusting.
I’m not sure what article you’re reading or planet you happen to be on right now. Goodyear and the NHTSA both seem to have screwed up here. The whole point of the article was to underscore how the entire premise of a recall at this stage is too-little-too-late. If this was yet another case of a manufacturer sweeping something under the rug, Goodyear got away with it.
Your premise is wrong.
I have a 12-year-old full-size spare tire in my garage that has 10 miles on it, for a vehicle I just traded. The rubber is still tacky; it’s probably had an hour’s worth of sunlight exposure in its life.
I plan to discard it. But if I still had the vehicle, and if Kuhmo recalled this tire, I’d want to know it was unsafe and I’d get it replaced.
It is entirely plausible that someone would have an old RV tire still in service, because many RVs don’t get much use, and because many people shield their tires from sunlight when the vehicle is parked. One could easily think a clean shiny tire is a good tire, forgetting how old it is.
YouTubers routinely inflate 50-year-old tires and drive on them just to see if the car can still go. It’s stupid, but people do it.
Your dismissive attitude about a safety issue that cost 95 people their lives is predictable because of your steadfast zeal to somehow blame the government.
Consider your virtue adequately signaled.
I would STRONGLY advise against driving on that 12-year-old tire unless you absolutely have to, have inspected the sidewall for cracks/swelling, and don’t plan on moving all that far or fast before replacing it.
The government should never be above scrutiny in a free and fair society. Nor should any large corporate entity or individual. If people are driving around on two-decade-old tires, that seems pretty irresponsible. If government regulators take over twenty years to launch a seemingly necessary recall (effectively rendering it pointless), that seems irresponsible. If a tire manufacturer knowingly allows a product to be fitted to a vehicle it wasn’t intended for or intentionally withheld data about a defect, that also seems mighty irresponsible. These aren’t mutually exclusive concepts.
We have a strong suspicion that if NHTSA had been more aggressive and recalled the tires after 2 deaths you’d agree with Goodyear that it was all due to poor maintenance. If drivers had kept their tires properly inflated they wouldn’t have died. More government overreach!
You would be surprised how many old farm vehicles stashed in barns and buildings with 20 year old or more tires are used every now and then. They might not go on major highways but they are still used for hauling around the farm and the nearby towns. I have seen a lot of them in the past 35 years living in a rural area and an area that was rural now suburban Cincinnati. Boone County where I live in Northern Kentucky was mostly rural but has been growing steadily and is now the fastest growing county in Kentucky with a major Amazon hub, Toyota North American Parts Distribution Warehouse, Carl Zeiss, Levi Strauss, Fram Filter, and many others. Last few decades more homes have been built and many Cincinnatians have moved to NKY for less expensive housing and lower taxes. So I still see an occasional old flat bed farm truck but not as many since many of the farmers have gone to 1 ton diesel pickups and use trailers. I bet if you were to look at some of those old trucks you would still find some of these old Goodyear tires on them. My granddad who was a farmer had a 68 IH Loadstar with a tandem axel and tilt bed.
Are you by any chance a real estate agent?
No my wife was at one time but when you live in a place for 35 years and you see the change especially when you as a child and then teenager spent summers helping out on my grandfather’s farm and learning to drive there. I was raised in Houston and spent 29 years of my life there and lived thru many changes their as well. People that spend their whole lives in a place usually cannot see changes that an outsider who has experienced living in other place has. When I moved to NKY 35 years ago the natives never thought the place would grow but at the time my wife was flying and she talked with people in California and New York that were buying up real estate in Northern Kentucky and holding it at the time. A few years later Delta created a large hub at the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport and transferred people to the hub and real estate prices skyrocketed over the next few years (since then Delta pulled their hub out and since then Amazon has built a facility at the airport that is large than the rest of the airport). Real estate here was very inexpensive and people moving from California could buy twice the house at a fraction of California prices. There were lots of farms grain, cattle, and horses when I moved here 35 years ago and most of those farms have been developed into subdivisions, shopping, warehouses, and other businesses. It has been hard for the county and state to keep up with building and maintenance of roads.
Tractor tires aren’t subjected to high speeds and pose little danger of a blowout. I definitely wouldn’t be worried about driving a tractor with truly ancient tires on it, even if they showed signs of rot. However I would need some kind of lofty financial incentive to pilot an RV wearing a set of rubber that was old enough to vote.
If you wonder why this is happening, just go to your local major port (I can see one of the West Coast’s largest out my office window) and look at the drayage trailers used to cart containers from the dock to the rail yard and back. As far as I can tell they basically never receive any maintenance. I wouldn’t be shocked if some of those tires are 40 years old, and they’re rolling around the streets in our industrial district, often under load (although at slow speeds).
I’d welcome the Apple CarPlay OS in lieu of the current UI system in our VW ID.4. Realizing that OEMs spend millions developing their own systems, they simply tend not to work as well as either Apple, Android, or Google.
We recently picked up a junker car to convert to Lemons. The tires on the front had 2009 dates. They held air so we drove them carefully on a low traffic road to see how bad they truly were.
Bad.
Under hard braking, they gave up and slid at about 60% of normal threshold braking-like driving on plastic.
I see how the “Exotic Car Crashed on Track due to Old Tires” story could occur.
Hoping you finished them off with an extended burnout. Though I’m guessing that wasn’t the case since this was a Lemons car.
So, they basically got away with it. Instead of having to recall the tires (which would cost them a lot of money), the investigation results arrived so late as to them not have to take any real financial loss.
There’s a story behind all of this, and not a good one. It’s not about people failing to inflate their tires adequately, and its not about a gov’t watchdog agency failing to be fully aggressive. It’s about a cynical, calculated cover-up by Goodyear, which cost lives and ruined families, but kept the machine running.
https://jalopnik.com/goodyear-knew-of-dangerous-rv-tire-failures-for-over-20-1824997252
Something is rotten in the state of Akron.
No offense intended to anyone, but I have always been of the belief and experience that any Goodyear tire that doesn’t have the name EAGLE on it is junk.
Goodyear slowed and obscured the safety data until they knew these tires were largely out of service in order to reduce the recall costs.
They have known for 20 years that these tires were defective and not suitable for use in the applications they chose to sell to RV Manufacturers. They knew it was not a safe design for RV’s but they kept selling it anyway.
When the blowouts started, they blamed the owners, and when their internal tests and reports showed a problem, they delayed and obscured in order to minimize the costs AND litigation.
It’s much easier to settle the case and not admit fault PRIOR to issuing a recall. That’s why they did the recall AFTER the tires were not on the road and the cases are largely settled out.
If you follow the articles and court documents, you will never want to buy or ride on a goodyear product again.
https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/goodyear-rv-tire-linked-to-multiple-deaths-is-still-on-motorhomes-a1197423360/
Oh, crud … it’s THAT tire. I forgot all about that scandal. Thanks for the reminder.