WASHINGTON (May 31, 2001)—Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. has formally requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration open a safety investigation into the Ford Explorer.
Testing performed by Dennis Guenther, a professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State University, “shows that certain of the Explorer models will experience an `oversteer' condition in most circumstances follwing a tread separation on a left rear tire,” said Bridgestone/Firestone CEO John T. Lampe in a letter to NHTSA Acting Administrator L. Robert Shelton.
Those Explorers, Mr. Lampe said, “have an inadequate margin of control…to permit control by average drivers in the foreseeable events of tread separation during normal highway driving.” Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. has long asserted that design defects in the Explorer helped cause the accidents that killed 174 people. Ford Motor Co., however, insists the Firestone tires on those vehicles were solely to blame.