Word: tiring
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Watching Masatoshi Ono, CEO of Bridgestone/Firestone, sweat under the nasty glare of Congress during last week's tire-recall hearings, you almost had to feel sorry for the reserved Japanese executive. Ono, a lifelong company man and engineering whiz who joined Bridgestone straight out of university more than 40 years ago, has spent the better part of the past decade propping up the sagging fortunes of Firestone, the U.S. company Bridgestone paid $2.6 billion for in 1988. Now here he was, the prime suspect in the the biggest consumer scare since the Tylenol-tampering case, linked to at least...
NHTSA's attempts to improve safety have also faced congressional roadblocks. Tire-safety standards have not budged for 32 years, despite repeated calls for revision. But standing in the way of efforts to expand NHTSA's regulatory powers are such pro-auto legislators as John Dingell, the House Commerce Committee's senior Democrat, who is from Dearborn, Mich. (an auto center), and Michael Oxley, a Republican from Finley, Ohio (a tire center). Billy Tauzin, the committee's chairman, from Louisiana, tried several years ago to cut back on NHTSA's enforcement authority...
...when Congress allowed the speed limit to go back up, the stress on tires rose dramatically. Even so, manufacturers insisted that nylon caps produced a more rigid tire with a rougher ride and argued that except for tires subjected to speeds of 110 m.p.h. or more, the synthetic overlays were not needed. Hence most major-brand tires used in the U.S. today lack nylon caps...
...tests were carried out in 1997, 1998 and 1999 by Standard Testing Laboratories, which performs numerous tests for the industry. One popped up in a California trial that ended in June with a jury's awarding $15 million to a man who demonstrated that the tread of his Dunlop tire had collapsed in part because the company did not design a nylon cap into the tire. He is now a quadriplegic; the case is on appeal. According to plaintiffs' lawyers and experts, the STL studies document on video what happens to major-brand-name radials as their inflation is reduced...
Firestone engineers advocated the use of nylon caps in the '70s to head off the infamous tread-separation scandal on Firestone 500 radials. In this latest scandal, however, Firestone's replacement tires in the U.S. do not have nylon caps, except for a few Bridgestones shipped in from the parent company in Japan. Firestone argues that its tire problems are specific to one factory and not a matter of technology. Bridgestone, however, does sell the nylon cap Dueler for SUVs in the U.S. Like other nylon-fitted tires, they are higher-grade and cost $103 each, compared with just about...