Tire manufacturer Goodyear faces global blowout scandal – Technologist

Ten years. For 10 years, a penniless widow has waged an incredible crusade, in the shadows, entrenched in her village in eastern France. Her target is the powerful multinational Goodyear, the world’s third-largest tire manufacturer. It has been an unbalanced and utterly hopeless battle – or so it seemed. Armed only with her conviction and an iron will, Sophie Rollet, with the help of unlikely allies, is on course to achieving the impossible: defeating the American corporation.

On July 1, 2020, Le Monde revealed the quest of this former nursery assistant (article here in French). Devastated by the sudden death of her husband – Jean-Paul, a truck driver who died in the summer of 2014 on the A36 freeway, less than 10 kilometers from his home – she was never satisfied with the official version, that of a dramatic but ordinary road accident caused by the unfortunate bursting of an overheated tire.

From her old house in Geney, a hamlet of 150 inhabitants in the Franche-Comté region, Rollet has spent a decade trying to prove Goodyear’s responsibility in numerous truck accidents in France and throughout Europe, including the one that claimed her husband’s life. Now, according to numerous confidential documents that Le Monde is revealing, the facts seem to prove her right.

Internal e-mails, secret spreadsheets, hidden strategies and figures… These elements, covering many European countries, document a global scandal with serious consequences: Goodyear is now accused of failing to warn the public about potential manufacturing defects affecting tens of thousands of tires manufactured in Luxembourg and involved in many accidents. The French administration and courts were slow to take the measure of this problem.

In reality, the case began a few years before the collision that was fatal to Jean-Paul Rollet; perhaps with another traffic accident, just as ordinary, just as tragic. A pile-up like the thousands that take place on French roads every year, and are usually only covered by the local press. Like the one on September 15, 2011, when the southern regional newspaper Midi Libre ran the headline on its inside pages: “New tragedy on the A9: two dead and five injured.”

‘Fate’ strikes again

Just before 1 pm the previous day, the front left tire of an Italian truck carrying a cargo of tomato juice and aluminum coils burst near Loupian, not far from the southern city of Montpellier. “The Italian truck driver was killed, while his Hungarian colleague was seriously injured and evacuated by helicopter to Montpellier after a lengthy extrication procedure,” read the article. In their accident report, the gendarmes noted that “the first truck crossed the median strip to collide with another truck traveling in the opposite direction, and three other light vehicles were involved in the accident.” The tire involved was a Goodyear Marathon LHS II. The accident was thought to be an act of fate.

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