Word: nhtsa
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Meanwhile, until February of this year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had received fewer than 50 complaints, compiled over the better part of a decade, about the suspect tires, in addition to tips from State Farm that it was seeing an unusually high number of insurance claims for the models. (This year, according to a State Farm document examined by TIME, the number of cases has been even higher, with 12 appearing in the first four months alone.) In March, though, 30 to 40 more complaints flooded in after a report on tread-separation accidents aired on Houston...
That piqued the agency's interest. On April 4, officials there contacted Roberts. Most product-liability attorneys preferred not to get involved with NHTSA. Once a fierce enforcer of auto safety (it instigated a massive 1978 recall against Firestone), it had become just another underfunded government regulator with little power to police or penalize. Lawyers feared the agency would come up with a whitewash that companies would use in their defense. But Roberts, spurred on by the dead girl's parents, decided to help NHTSA do its job. Through an official, he let the agency know about his discovery, helping...
...hundreds of thousands have put themselves on waiting lists for tire replacements. Auto-repair shops have had to field countless calls from panicked customers clamoring to have their tires checked, worried about every tiny shred, every tear on the tread. Nothing last week allayed those fears. On Thursday NHTSA raised to 88 the total deaths attributed to the defective tires and the number of injuries to 250. Meanwhile, Firestone's voluntary recall has so far replaced only close to 2 million of the 6.5 million defective tires that it believes are out there. There may be more. Just as Americans...
...coming out of its Decatur plant until Ford did a sophisticated computer analysis in late July. However, according to testimony given by one of its former employees late last year, the company did its own regular quarterly analysis of adjustment data, plant by plant, every few months. And though NHTSA began its investigation in May, it took Firestone almost three months to gather the data necessary for it and Ford to pinpoint the problem. In the future, Ford says, contracts will stipulate it has complete access to all tire-supplier warranty data...
...NHTSA labels 1.4 million more tires defective; raises fatalities to 88, injuries...