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September 1, 2000
If there's a hero in the Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall fiasco, it's an obscure, mild-mannered employee of State Farm Insurance. Sam Boyden works in the research unit of State Farm's Bloomington, Ill., headquarters.

Boyden sits in a cubicle all day taking inquiries from adjusters trying to determine if a given problem is the result of a manufacturer's defect. He and a handful of other employees have access to State Farm's huge claims database. It lets them track every failure of every imaginable automotive component. If the same part fails over and over again, State Farm suspects a defect and presses the manufacturer to bear the repair cost.

The unit also cooperates with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which sometimes calls when it needs help tracking down a problem. Neither Boyden nor his colleagues normally initiate any kind of action beyond answering inquiries.

But the Firestone case was different. It was in July 1988 that Boyden got a call asking if there had been other instances of tread separation in Firestone tires. He researched the issue and found 20 such cases stretching back to 1992. All of them involved Firestone ATX tires and 14 of them also involved the Ford Explorer.

This got Boyden's attention. The 43-year-old high school graduate is a car enthusiast who spends most of his spare time tinkering with cars. He knows that tread separation in a passenger car or light truck tire is not normal. It's not the result of wear and tear and it raises serious questions about design or manufacturing defects.

Boyden thought the information was worthy of NHTSA's attention and passed it on to them in an email.

Nothing happened.

Boyden kept an eye out for additional cases and found 30 in 1999 alone. He continued passing reports on to NHTSA but heard nothing.

Finally in May 2000, the agency roused itself and announced a formal investigation, which led rapidly to the recall of 6.5 million ATX and Wilderness tires.

Boyden's reward? State Farm says it will include the incident in its claim-adjusting courses. Oh, and NHTSA has asked Boyden if he knows of any other defective tires.

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This story is based on an account originally published by The Wall Street Journal.