By now, everyone who drives has heard that there is a problem with some tires on some sport utility vehicles. Most of the problems consist of blowouts caused by tread separation of one of the rear tires, resulting in rollovers. Millions of tires have been recalled and hundreds of thousands of motorists are panicked.
Detailed investigations are of course ongoing.
As best we can tell, the two steel belts glued to the rubber on certain models of Firestone tires are separating in high temperatures and at relatively high speeds. This is almost certainly due to a manufacturing defect and to lax quality control by Firestone. Firestone has virtually admitted as much. Millions of tires supplied in the same sizes, with the same recommended tire pressure, and during the same years by Goodyear have not suffered suspicious numbers of failures. Anti-SUV forces have, as expected, blasted Ford because of the rollovers.