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First Congressional District of New Mexico
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ask.heather@mail.house.gov

In Washington DC
442 Cannon House
Office Building
Washington, DC
20515
202-225-6316 Phone
202-225-4975 Fax
In Albuquerque
20 First Plaza NW
Suite 603
Albuquerque, NM
87102
505-346-6781 Phone
505-346-6723 Fax

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Congresswoman Heather Wilson, First Congressional District of New Mexico


Postcard
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The Trouble with Firestone September 07, 2000
 
Dear Friends, I flew back to Washington Tuesday night to be here for a consumer protection hearing on the Firestone tire recall yesterday. Over the last week, I`ve reviewed a lot of documents on this recall and a few things are clear. First, internal Firestone documents show that the tire maker only took action when they were forced to do so and they knew that they had a problem for a year and a half before they did anything. Their press releases claiming that they didn`t know until July of this year are rubbish. They knew, and they didn`t do anything to protect the safety of their customers, probably because they were afraid of lawsuits and losing money. Second, the National Highway Safety Administration had reports in the summer of 1998 from a State Farm Insurance researcher and car buff that there were 21 claims of failures with these tires and two fatalities. But the watchdog didn`t bark and they should have. They only got focussed on the problem when a Houston TV station ran a story revealing the problem. Third, Firestone has a shortage of replacement tires and said they are prioritizing the shipment of replacements to places where they have high temperatures, lots of long distance highway miles. Every southern and western state except New Mexico was on their list, and I wanted to know why. Why are over 700 New Mexicans on the waiting list for tires when 9 of the 88 fatalities reported have been in New Mexico? That`s 10% of the fatalities in a state with only 1.6 million people. I was stunned at the answer. They looked at the numbers of incidents in a state without considering how many people or how many Ford Explorers were on the road there. "What? It didn`t even occur to you to look at incidents per vehicle or incidents per person? You are comparing New Mexico with California? A state with 36 million people?" They finally admitted that they shouldn`t have done it that way and they made a mistake. After 4 weeks of lip service to the New Mexico Attorney General and New Mexico consumers, they finally admitted that they screwed up. There are things we can do, and I will. The first thing we need to do is change the law so that when a multinational corporation has a recall in a foreign country, our safety people will be told about it. The National Highway Safety Administration needs to change the way it tracks consumer complaints. Ford is going to take the lead in developing remote sensing for tires. Makes sense. We have idiot lights on our cars for oil pressure and open doors. Why not tire pressure? We all know that nothing is perfect. Equipment fails. The unforeseen comes about. That`s not what I called Firestone on the carpet for. It was worse than that. They knew about a problem with their product that could hurt people and they failed to protect them. At the end of the hearing, I told Firestone to fire their lawyers and start listening to their hearts and doing what`s right. Only then will they recover their reputation and the trust of the American people. Wish you were here, Heather
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