Goodyear reports higher accident rate

AKRON — After several years of improvements, Goodyear suffered a setback last year in its factory safety performance, the firm's recently issued Corporate Responsibility report for 2016 shows.

Goodyear's CR report for 2016 includes a chart indicating that the total incident rate (TIR) across global manufacturing group increased to 1.97, up from 1.76 last year.

The reversal took Goodyear's TIR reduction since 2011 to 28 percent, compared to an equivalent improvement-figure of 36 percent reported last year.

As explained in its 2015 CR report, Goodyear calculates TIR from the number of cases multiplied by 200,000 and divided by total work hours. This gives the firm a percentage of the number of injuries per 100 employees.

The full text CR document for 2016 carried less data about Goodyear's health and safety performance compared with previous reports.

For example, last year Goodyear said it received notifications of 19 safety and environmental violations and incurred $64,178 in fines in 2015. No such information was provided in the CR report for 2016.

There was no reference to incidents at Goodyear's Danville tire plant, where four people were killed in separate incidents between August 2015 and August 2016.

Other items worth noting in the report:

• A reduction of 82 percent in releases to the environment since 2010, although there was a slight uptick in reportable releases last year, including one involving a “small quantity of diluted, biodegradable oil” from the tire plant in Luxembourg.

• A drop of 41 percent in solvent use since 2010, including a drop last year as well. The firm reported 15 of its plants have eliminated solvents entirely. Goodyear said its focus remains on driving solvent use in radial passenger and truck tires to zero, while achieving “best practice” levels in bias tires and other production lines.