Lorraine Complains: Goodyear finally recalls RV tires after 20 years, 95 deaths and injuries

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“Goodyear recalls [170,000] tires that federal government says had high failure rate,” reads a recent headline in the New York Times. Recalls happen all the time, and while it’s always better if a company does so voluntarily and doesn’t wait until a government agency orders it to, it all goes towards improved consumer safety.

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This recall is different, however: the tires in question were last produced in 2003. Nineteen years have elapsed since the tires were last made. How long tires last is always a popular question, and the answer depends on a lot of things: how good the tires are, what conditions you drive in, how much you drive if they’ve been maintained, as well as who you ask. But what if the tires on your vehicle are the wrong ones in the first place, and put you and your family in danger?

Goodyear is finally being held to account nearly two decades later. Why has NHTSA refused to let go of the file? Because of the nature of the use of the tires in question. The tires, G159 size 275/70R22.5, were “intended for use on inner-city delivery trucks, but had instead been sold and installed on large R.V.s, which travel for longer periods, and on highways at much higher speeds.” The Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation have also joined the fight.

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On Goodyear’s site, it states: “While there is no safety defect in the G159 275/70R22.5 tire and few, if any, remain on the road, Goodyear — in cooperation with NHTSA — is initiating a voluntary recall of the tire to address risks shown to occur when the tire was used in an under-inflated or overloaded condition on Class A Motorhomes.” It goes on to say Goodyear hasn’t had an injury claim against the tires on a Class A in 14 years. The company also shovels the blame onto motorhome manufacturers for using the tire. 

The problem with that is “G159 tires manufactured by Goodyear from 1996 through 2003, designed to be mounted to a 22.5” diameter rim, [were] sold as either original or replacement equipment to recreational vehicle (“RV”) manufacturers or owners,” (italics added) states NHTSA’s letter to Goodyear earlier this year. If the original equipment tires on a vehicle you purchased were potential rolling deathtraps, the company that manufactured those tires bears responsibility.

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Lawsuits against the tire giant were sealed, but NHTSA discovered, “[f]rom 1998 to 2015, a total of 95 people were either killed or injured in crashes resulting from the faulty tires, according to claims reviewed by the safety agency.” In March of 2021, “Goodyear was ordered by a judge to pay about US$520,000 for hiding internal high-speed testing data for the G159… [in one lawsuit that spanned 15 years]…The data showed that, at highway speeds, the G159 reached temperatures even Goodyear’s own experts have testified could lead to tire failures, like tread separation,” according to Consumer Reports. It was also discovered that hundreds of RV owners had filed property damage claims due to the tires’ failure. Tires intended to be used for stop-and-go city delivery trucks had been used for years on large RVs commonly running thousands of miles in hot climates at increasing highway speeds.

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Goodyear’s G159 statement that “the RV manufacturers who selected this tire for their motorhomes had responsibility for determining and communicating appropriate load standards to their customers,” is rich — and wrong. “Goodyear has claimed the tire had multiple applications, and an estimated 40,000 ended up on RVs — including 39 models made by 17 manufacturers.” The tire failed on as many as one in 10 motorhomes, court records indicate. 

Goodyear privately settled at least 41 lawsuits related to crashes caused by the tires, and NHTSA only opened its investigation in 2017 — nearly twenty years after people started losing their lives — because an attorney in one of those suits got a judge’s order to tell NHTSA what was going on. The details of the crashes are gruesome; this Jalopnik piece from 2018 is a brilliant dive into what Goodyear knew, when, and the extremes it took to evade responsibility. 

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 RVs occupy a unique niche in the vehicle hierarchy. Large, heavy vehicles, often sparingly driven, but often pushed into service for long-haul drives when they are. This is when tires matter the most, and for a tire company to knowingly supply such vehicles with tires that would be compromised when an RV did precisely what an RV is intended to do — hit the open road — is a travesty. 

The reason NHTSA has continued to hold Goodyear accountable is because of that niche. There are still tires out there that need to be changed out. RVs change hands and often go through several owners. People tend to look at the mileage first, and perhaps delay a costly tire swap if things look okay from a visual inspection. There are still some of those tires out there.

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Overlooked in much of this is the fact that organizations like NHTSA don’t have the money and staffing that a manufacturer does. It’s like a chipmunk facing down a grizzly bear, and when manufacturers use those resources to compromise consumer safety and hide potential dangers — think the GM ignition failure — innocent people in affected vehicles (and those around them) can pay with their lives.

In its statement, Goodyear promises it “will conduct a free tire replacement campaign, including extensive outreach efforts to replace any tire that might still exist on these vehicles. Safety and product quality are and always have been Goodyear’s top priority.”

Except for that part where the company fought tooth and nail to hide shirk responsibility for the 95 people injured or killed as a result of tires it knew were not safe.

If you have an old RV, check it for G159 tires size 275/70R22.5. Goodyear will finally replace them.