2024-03-26 17:00:02
Ten years. Ten years of an incredible crusade, led in the shadows by a penniless widow, holed up in her village in Franche-Comté, and targeting a powerful multinational, Goodyear, the world’s third largest manufacturer of tires. An unbalanced and, above all, perfectly desperate fight; at least we thought so… And yet. Armed only with her conviction and an iron will, Sophie Rollet is on the verge, with the help of unlikely allies, of achieving the impossible: bringing the American company to its knees.
The 1is July 2020, The world had revealed the quest of this former childminder. Devastated by the sudden disappearance of her husband, Jean-Paul, a truck driver who died in the summer of 2014 on the A36 motorway, less than 10 kilometers from his home, she was never satisfied with the official version, that of a dramatic but banal road accident due to the unfortunate burst of an overheated tire…
From her old building located in Geney (Doubs), a hamlet of 150 inhabitants, Sophie Rollet spent a decade trying to demonstrate Goodyear’s responsibility in numerous heavy goods vehicle accidents, in France, but also throughout Europe, including the one that cost her husband his life. However, according to multiple confidential documents that The world is able to reveal, the facts seem to prove him right.
Internal emails, secret tables, strategies or hidden figures… These elements, relating in particular to numerous European countries, document a global scandal with serious consequences: the Goodyear company is today accused of not having alerted the public to the potential defects of manufacturing affecting several tens of thousands of tires manufactured in Luxembourg and involved in numerous accidents… The French justice system and administration were slow to take stock of the problem.
In reality, the affair began a few years before the fatal collision with Jean-Paul Rollet; perhaps by another traffic accident, just as “ordinary”, just as tragic. Thousands of accidents occur on French roads every year, which, as a general rule, are only covered by the local press. Like this September 15, 2011, when the Free lunch title on interior pages: “New drama on the A9: two dead and five injured”.
“Fatality” strikes again
The daily indicates that, the day before, shortly before 1 p.m., the left front tire of an Italian heavy goods vehicle transporting a cargo of tomato juice and aluminum coils burst near Loupian, in Hérault. “The Italian truck driver was killed, his Hungarian colleague very seriously injured and evacuated by helicopter to Montpellier after a long extrication,” the article states. In their report of findings, the gendarmes note that “the first heavy goods vehicle crossed the central reservation to collide with another heavy goods vehicle traveling in the opposite direction, three other light vehicles were involved in the accident”. The tire in question is a Goodyear, Marathon LHS II model. Fate, we think…
You have 86.92% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
1711475204
#Goodyear #American #manufacturer #facing #global #tire #blowout #scandal