Tragic Indifference

Just finished reading Tragic Indifference. A book about one lawyer fighting two powerful American corporations over their defective products - the Firestone Wilderness ATX tire failures and the Ford Explorer's rollover issues. Penenberg, the author, did extensive research to understand the root cause of the failures of the products. He also gives great account about how they (Ford and Firestone/Bridgestone) decided to save money instead of correctly fixing the problem at the expense of injuries and human lives; and were not forthcoming to NHTSA (the automotive regulatory industry). The bottom line is that both Ford and Firestone designed a poor products and upper management of both companies went against the advise of their own engineers when they warned about future issues once the products were in the field. What's more, as was discovered from litigation, the Explorer failed Ford's own stability tests! Because of building on a new assembly line that would cost millions of dollars, Ford decided to build the Explorer on the platform of a Ranger pick up; and then marketed the vehicle as something that could be driven in rugged terrain conditions - something the Ranger was not capable of (short track width and high CG). Firestone, at the request of Ford, took the basic structure of a passenger car tire and created a tire that would be used on a light truck (i.e., the Explorer). Then, also at the request of Ford, to save weight and increase fuel economy Firestone cut out rubber and steal from the tire (the basic structure of a tire). To further exasperate the design flaws, against Firestone's wishes, Ford (because of the decreased risk of rolling over) recommended a 26 psi tire pressure; this resulted in other issue - more tire meeting the road surface, therefore building up more heat. Moreover, as recounted by former employees, the tires were constructed in poor manufacturing conditions. All of this added up to the perfect storm when operating mostly in hot climates such as the American south/southwest, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, tires began failing (de-treading) and rollovers consequently started taking place. In all, at the time of publication almost 300 deaths resulted, 1 in 2700 Explorers built resulted in a fatal rollover, 1 in 500 Ford Bronco II's (the Explorer's predecessor) built resulted in a fatal rolloverover and over 1000 lawsuits were filed. There are over 3 million Explorer's still on the road today

It is a must read to those in the automotive and manufacturing industry, especially those of us in the regulatory part of the industry.