Feds investigating "defective Goodyear motorhome tires [that] caused crashes?

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VallAndMo

VallAndMo

Well-known member
Joined
May 6, 2011
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550
Hello everyone,

Just saw this and thought it might be of interest:

http://www.rvbusiness.com/2018/04/goodyear-tires-may-have-caused-deaths-injuries/

Cheers,
--
  Vall.
 
Val, you beat me to the punch.  I saw the report in this mornings paper and was going to create a topic.

Anyone with Goodyear G159 tires on their motorhome should use extreme caution when driving on these tires.
 
Copied this from the bottom of the article......The investigation covers about 40,000 tires made from 1996 to 2003......hopefully everyone that has 2003 tires on their RV has replaced them by now but it does make me wonder about current Goodyear quality and how or where the alleged tires were made.
 
This is old news revived - the investigation has been going on for nearly a year now and was reported on this site back in January (see http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,111598.msg1007557.html#msg1007557).  The recent spate of headlines was triggered by an formal information-seeking request from the NHTSA to Goodyear and a tear-jerking lawsuit report covered in jalopnik.com.  Goodyear, of course, denies that the tires have any more than the usual percentage of problems.  It will take months or even years to get the truth sorted out.

I don't mean to defend Goodyear, especially without all the facts on the table,  but I hope this doesn't turn into another witch hunt in which a tire manufacturer gets blamed for poor OEM tire choices by the vehicle makers, inadequate inflation recommendations, and just plain poor tire care by owners.  Toyo and Firestone have been victims of this in the past. Toyo was completely exonerated but still suffered business losses after being convicted in the news media. The Firestone case was more complex and Firestone as well as Ford covered up problems that (in hindsight) should have been disclosed and acted upon much sooner.
 
  I've read that the tires were local/regional type and were rated for 64mph. If that's the case and the operator ran them significantly faster it's operator error, not defect.
 
johnhicks said:
  I've read that the tires were local/regional type and were rated for 64mph. If that's the case and the operator ran them significantly faster it's operator error, not defect.
Click to expand...
I would agree, if warnings were explicitly displayed to keep the speed below 64mph.  That would include a sticker near the speedometer with the warning. 

I am, however, part of the folks who believe that far to often people don't take personal responsibility to learn and understand proper use of the things they use and then blame someone else when things go wrong. 
 
The G159 is indeed designed for the regional/local delivery application and the pre-1998 version had a max 65 mph sustained speed rating. That was bumped to 75 in 1998, but it's not clear what GY did additional speed testing to validate that.

It appears GY may have tried to cover up the extent of the problems, but I get really irritated at the sensationalism in jalopnik.com and safetyreserach.net.  In my opinion, statements like "The tire was designed for urban delivery vehicles" are intended more to make the manufacturer look bad rather than to help the public understand the issues.  Motorhome use is classified as a subset of the "regional delivery" application across the entire Tire & Rubber Industry. nt just the G159. There are only two tires designed specifically for motohome use - the GY G670 and the Michelin XRV, and the XRV is also marketed for "regional delivery" trucking. Further, most medium and heavy duty tires available in the 90's had 65 mph speed ratings so GY was not pushing a tire that would be considered sub-standard at the time.  And finally, it is the chassis and coach builders who selected the tire for their motorhomes, not Goodyear. Very likely GY Okayed that use, but they did not force any coach builder to use that tire. None of those factors get mentioned in the news articles.
 
Tire engineers know that both MH makers to often make mistakes on tire sizing and motorhome owners  too often neglect inflation and signs of damage.  Claims of faulty tires are so common that they are naturally skeptical of them. That said, I think they probably go far overboard in rejecting those claims.

Since the tire debacles of the 80's and 90's, I suspect the tire companies have learned to build in some extra safety margin to avoid some of the tire neglect problems, but they have also learned to circle their wagons for defense and send out lawyers rather than engineers to do battle.
 
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