Firestone ATX tire failures: what 435 owner reports say

Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the Firestone ATX, read and classified: which failures owners actually describe, how that mix compares with all tire complaints on file, and at what mileage the tire let go.

By Mark Bishop · Last verified 2026-10-07

The evidence base

435Written owner reports

87Reported crashes

115Reported injuries

19Reported deaths

Crash, injury and death figures are the counts owners themselves reported to NHTSA when filing.

What owners described

Tread or belt separation appears in 22% of these reports; about 1.7× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 435 reports filed against the Firestone ATX across every vehicle it was fitted to that include a written account; a single report can describe more than one problem, so they do not total 100%.

Reported problem	This subject	All tire complaints	Relative
Tread or belt separation	22%	13%	1.7×
Blowout or sudden deflation	18%	20%	0.9×
Loss of control, rollover or collision	16%	8%	1.9×
Sidewall failure	5%	15%	0.4×
Cracking or dry rot	4%	9%	0.4×
Bubble or bulge in the tire	3%	6%	0.5×

Mileage at failure

58 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 22,000 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 2,100 and 56,000 miles.

In owners' own words

Verbatim excerpts from complaints filed with NHTSA about Firestone ATX. Reports are published by NHTSA as filed and are lightly cleaned here only to remove intake codes.

I HAD TREAD SEPARATION ON TWO TIRES WITHIN A WEEK. FIRST INCIDENT WAS REPORTED TO FIRESTONE. REPORT#017116. SECOND INCIDENT WILL BE REPORTED ON MONDAY 6-28-99. I AM NOT TAKING ANY MORE CHANCES. I AM REPLACING REMAING 2 FRONT TIRES AND THE DAMAGED TIRES TODAY. I WANT FIRESTONE TO PAY FOR ALL BAD TIRES. I WANT YOU TO INVESTIGATE, THIS IS SERIOUS. IF YOU NEED ANYMORE INFORMATION LET ME KNOW. THANKS.

NHTSA complaint 156627

I WAS DRIVING TO WORK IN THE MORNING AT ABOUT 75 MILES PER HOUR, WHEN I HEARD A LOUD NOISE AND MY EXPLORER BECAME VERY HARD TO HANDLE ON THE ROAD. I WAS ABLE TO GET TO THE SHOULDER OF THE ROAD SAFELY. I WENT TO INSPECT THE DAMAGE AND FOUND THAT THE TREAD OF MY RIGHT FRONT TIRE HAD COMPLETELY PEELED OFF. THIS CREATED DAMAGE TO THE BODY OF MY VEHICLE. I T WAS A VERY FRIGHTENING ACCIDENT, BUT IN READING OTHER STORIES, I FEEL EXTREMELY FORTUNATE.OOC.

NHTSA complaint 206180

WHILE BACKING INTO THE DRIVEWAY RIGHT REAR TIRE JUST BLEW UP. TIRE SIZE 33125016.5. OWNER HAD THIS SAME PROBLEM ON THE OTHER THREE TIRES. THE TIRES BLEW OUT AT HIGHWAY SPEEDS. ONE TIRE BLEW OUT IN MAY, AND THE OTHER TWO TIRES BLEW OUT TWO WEEKS LATER. 19,000 MILES WERE ON THE TIRES. TIRES ON A 70, CHEVROLET, BLAZER. DRIVER WAS ABLE TO CONTRO VEHICLE AND DID NOT CRASH.

NHTSA complaint 222815

PE-00-020 -TIRES ON A FORD EXPLORER 1993, TIRE SIZE NOT AVAILABLE, AND DOT NUMBER NOT AVAILABLE. TIRES WERE 15 INCHES. WHEN DRIVING AT 55-60 MPH TIRE CAME APART AROUND THE SIDEWALL AREA, CAUSING TREAD TO COMPLETELY SEPARATE WHICH RESULTED IN VEHICLE FLIPPING OVER SEVERAL TIMES, TOTALING VEHICLE. PLEASE PROVIDE ANY FURTHER DETAILS.

NHTSA complaint 224140

How to read this

Complaints are voluntarily submitted to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation and are not verified by NHTSA. They are owner-reported problems, not proven defects, and volume tracks how many of a tire were sold as much as how often it failed. What is comparable is the mix: which problems owners describe here versus across every tire complaint on file. That comparison, the mileage distribution and the mode rankings on this page are our analysis of the public record.

Related analysis

Tread or belt separation; 1.7× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Loss of control, rollover or collision; 1.9× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Firestone Wilderness; 1,134 reports
Firestone Steeltex; 708 reports
Firestone Wilderness AT; 679 reports
Firestone Steeltex R4S; 219 reports
Firestone Firehawk; 204 reports
Firestone Affinity; 192 reports

All Firestone tire failure analysis

FAQ

What goes wrong with Firestone ATX tires?

Across 435 written complaints, the most common description is tread or belt separation, in 22% of reports; about 1.7× as often as across all tire complaints. A single report can describe more than one problem.

Is the Firestone ATX recalled?

Complaints are not recalls. A complaint is a voluntary, unverified owner report; a recall is an official campaign requiring a free remedy. Check the current recall status by DOT date code at the NHTSA recall lookup; that is the only authoritative answer for your specific tire.

At what mileage do Firestone ATX tires fail?

Of the owners who stated an odometer reading, the middle report is at 22,000 miles, with 8 in 10 between 2,100 and 56,000 miles. These are failures, not typical tire life; nobody files a complaint about a tire that wore out normally.

Have Firestone ATX failures caused crashes?

Owners reported 87 crashes and 115 injuries when filing. NHTSA publishes these as reported and does not verify them.

Sources

Last verified 2026-10-07 against the sources below.

NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation; owner complaints dataset (unverified owner reports, US federal government work, public domain).
NHTSA Recalls database, nhtsa.gov/recalls.
Corpus baselines computed over 58,390 complaint narratives longer than 200 characters.