FORD/FIRESTONE TIRE TREAD ROLLOVER DEATHS Case Details: Describe in detail the illegal/unethical behavior you will be analyzing in your case analysis. You may choose any case of interest from your text or the news. In 2001, more than 175 deaths and 700 injuries in the United States were the result of Ford Explorers rolling over after the tread separated on Firestone tires with which the Explorers had been equipped. Firestone’s Wilderness AT tires were standard with Ford Explorers in 2000. Since Ford Explorer SUVs had a much higher center of gravity and were more prone to rollover than many other types of vehicles. As a result tire failure became an especially dangerous situation which led to devastating rollover accidents. At the …show more content…
Firestone was founded by in 1900.. The company was a pioneer in the mass production of tires. Firestone used this relationship to become the original equipment supplier of Ford automobiles, and was also active in the replacement market. In 1988, Bridgestone purchased Firestone, which became Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc. Bridgestone/Firestone was headquartered in Nashville, TN, employed over 45,000 and had 30 factories in the US. In 2000, it had sales revenues of $7.5 billion. In developing the Explorer, Ford's engineers were constrained from the start by previous decisions that locked the SUV onto a narrow truck frame and into a front-end suspension that was designed in the 1960s. As early as 1987, a Ford memo warned that "light-truck rollovers are 2 to 4 times the car rate" and urged Explorer developers to consider "any design action that improves vehicle stability or helps maintain the passenger safety in the vehicle." Ford maintains it did exactly this. The Explorer's platform dated back to the late 1970s, when Ford created a new line of light trucks that came to include the Ranger pickup and the now infamous Bronco II. Both vehicles used a unique "Twin I-Beam" suspension that raised their center of gravity by placing crisscrossing beams atop one another between the front tires. The company marketed I-Beam directly to consumers, since it had been used on the original and highly popular Bronco. But the Bronco II became a
With a mere 275 horsepower it was outperformed by all competition. “Along with the dreadful horsepower, Ford owners complained that the trucks they purchased yielded inadequate miles per gallon” (Powerstrokehub). To compensate for both these issues, for introduces a much higher pressure fuel delivery system that would allow for the cleaner burning of fuel and overall less fuel needed to run the engine. Ford and International Navistar also introduced a newly designed smart turbocharger. “This allowed the turbo housing to expand and contract depending on the throttle position” (Truck Trend). This allowed for a quicker spool time of the turbocharger with allowed a quicker horsepower gain and output resulting in better fuel economy. Tighter machining tolerances were also implied for almost all of the engine components that went into the 6.0l Powerstroke allowing grater compression of the engine and mitigating areas where oil, air or fuel could leak out under high pressures. “With all of these changes implemented that new 6.0l Powerstroke engine boasted a whopping 325 horsepower and 516 foot pounds of torque” (Banks Power). This gave customers a truck that could outperform all of the
In August of 1978 three teenage girls were driving a Ford Pinto and were struck from behind. The three girls died because the Ford Pinto’s fuel tank ruptured from the collision and burst into flames. There was a big debate about the safety of the Ford Pinto to its proneness to its fuel tank catching on fire in low-speed rear-end
A case study is a puzzle that has to be solved. The first thing to remember about writing a case study is that the case should have a problem for the readers to solve. The case should have enough information in it that readers can understand what the problem is and, after thinking about it and analyzing the information; the readers should be able to come up with a proposed solution. Writing an interesting case study is a bit like writing a detective story. You want to keep your readers very interested in the situation.
Nancy Denny believed she was buying a Bronco II, which gave her the ability to switch between two-wheel and four wheel drive. According to the sales manual this feature would be appealing to women due to the vehicles’ ability to drive safer on snow and ice. Nancy Denny bought the vehicle due to the benefits of the four wheel drive and additionally, she had not interest in using the vehicle for off road purposes. It could be said that the information provided in the manual were somewhat misleading, especially for those not
I own a 1979 F150 XLT Ranger. Before the Ranger became a compact truck, it was full size. Mine happens to be 4 wheel drive. I love it. I have been the proud owner for 15 years. I will never sell it. It is too easy to keep runnin'. Parts are affordable, and it is EASY to work on. Any of you who own and older Ford truck know what I'm talking about. So here is my tribute lens to the Ford truck.
reliable automotive engineering literature establishes that the overwhelming majority of tire disablements of all kinds, including tread separations and blowouts, on all kinds of vehicles at highway speeds, do not result in crashes;
Getting in a car accident is an unnerving thing. You never know what can happen and if your lucky you might see it coming. Well as often as these accidents occur, it happened to Spencer and I on one fateful summer evening.
In May of 1968, the Ford Motor Company, based upon a recommendation by then vice-president Lee Iacocca, decided to introduce a subcompact car and produce it domestically. In an effort to gain a large market share, the automobile was designed and developed on an accelerated schedule. During the first few years sales of the Pinto were excellent, but there was trouble on the horizon.
In the recent years, the United States government has been enforcing stricter mandates on auto manufacturers to create safer vehicles, and on construction companies to create safer roadways. Matthew Jensen wrote a dissertation for the Graduate School of Clemson University titled, A Methodology for the Analysis of In-vehicle Operating Data and Design of Intelligent Vehicle Systems for Improved Automotive Safety. In his abstract, Jensen evaluated the future of vehicle manufacturing and traffic-related incidents. Of course, every year more vehicles are manufactured, which in theory means the number of miles driven in vehicles increases. He points out how the World Health Organization (WHO) found that automobile crashes was the ninth
The case study I chose was Case Study #1 with Nitin, Priya, and Sujay. They are arguing or debating about whether or not their son Sujay should go to college to study art or a school to study engineering.
Ford Motor Company and its close ally Firestone Tires faced a serious crisis when many Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone AT/ATX tires rolled over as a consequence of tire failures. In 1999 the first fatalities occurred in Saudi Arabia and not much later similar accidents were reported in Venezuela. Ford immediately reacted by blaming the weather and vehicle owners for under-inflating their tires. However, Ford also began replacing tires. It was not until March 2000 when a Ford Explorer rollover in Texas USA
In case study research, an investigator studies an individual or small group of individuals with an unusual condition or situation. Case studies are typically clinical in scope. The investigator (often a clinical sociologist) sometimes uses self‐report measures to acquire quantifiable data on the subject. A comprehensive case study, including a long‐term follow‐up, can last months or years.
It’s a dark rainy night. You and your family are coming home from a late night family party. As a car is coming through an intersection another car cut in front of it. The driver decides to hit the brakes so you can avoid the car, but as he presses the brakes, the car loses control on the slick wet road. He is not able to gain control and at that point he has endangered the lives of himself and many others on the road. This is just one example of the many types of things that occur in our streets everyday. All that would have been needed to avoid this situation would have been a traction control system in his car, which would have detected that the car was skidding and would have applied the brakes to
Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., a subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation, was formed in 1990 when Bridgestone U.S.A. merged with The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. In addition to manufacturing tires, Bridgestone/Firestone produces a variety of products including air springs, building materials, synthetic and natural rubber, and industrial fibers and textiles. The Nashville, Tennessee-based company has over 38 QS9000/ISO9000 Certified production facilities throughout the Americas, along with numerous international facilities throughout the world.
Car accidents can happen to drivers anytime, anywhere. "According to the National Safety Council, which stated that more than 2.5 million collisions back every year, making it the most common type of car accidents, it is also known that the accident rear end as incidents of injury, because the nature of the collision leads often in whiplash injury the driver in the car in front and about 20% of people who participated in a rear collision injury symptoms of this kind. ", (NHTSA, auto-accident-resource.com). Among the car accidents, the teenage group is the only age group who is number of deaths is increasing instead of decreasing. Also, all the people are exposed to risk and actually every one of them has got car