Arizona, California, and Texas represent phase one. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee will be phase two. The remaining states are in phase three of the recall. There is no schedule for completion of the recall. The tires are suspected to peel off their casings, sometimes while the vehicles are being driven at high speeds.
Hot weather seems to make the tires fall apart more quickly.
Although most of the crashes occurred with tires on Ford Explorers, the carmaker has noted that tires are under the warranty of the supplier and are not Ford's responsibility to replace. Both Ford and Firestone have been investigating the crash reports. Ford has already given free replacement tires to owners of vehicles sold in Venezuela, Ecuador, Thailand, Malaysia, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia after there were reports of tire failure in those countries. But the tires were not replaced in the U.S., and the investigation continued. Firestone was on the brink of bankruptcy after a 1978 recall of 14 million of its 500 series tires that were subject to tread separations and blowouts.