Yokohama geolandar tire failures: what 53 owner reports say

Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the Yokohama Geolandar, 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

53Written owner reports

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

What owners described

Cracking or dry rot appears in 36% of these reports; about 3.9× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 53 reports filed against the Yokohama Geolandar 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
Cracking or dry rot	36%	9%	3.9×
Blowout or sudden deflation	34%	20%	1.7×
Sidewall failure	28%	15%	1.9×
Tread or belt separation	19%	13%	1.4×
Loss of control, rollover or collision	13%	8%	1.6×
Bubble or bulge in the tire	8%	6%	1.3×

Mileage at failure

53 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 16,600 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 3,000 and 41,015 miles.

In owners' own words

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

WHILE DRIVING APPROXIMATELY 55 MILES HR IN 820 I EXITED RIGHT ON THE WEATHERFORD EXIT AND WHILE IN THE TURN THE BD SIDE TIREBLEW OUT AN THE TREAD HAD COME OFF CAUSING MY CAR TO SPIN OUT OF CONTROL AND GO DOWN AN EMBANKMENT IN WHICH WE ALMOST FLIPPED MY CAR BEFORE WE COULD GET IT STOPPED IN WHICH IT CAUSED EXTENSIVE DAMAGE TO THE REAR DRIVERS SIDE OF THE VEHICLE.

NHTSA complaint 1034509

PURCHASED 4 NEW TIRES ON 12/29/2010, MILEAGE WAS 41015. NOW MILEAGE IS NOW 77061, TIRE TREAD IS AT.3/32. TIRES HAVE BEEN ROTATED EVERY 5 - 6 K AND ALIGNMENTS PERFORMED. ALL TIRES ARE WEARING UNEVENLY, THERE ARE SIGNS OF CRACKING AND STOPPING IN THE SNOW IS NOW A MAJOR HAZARD. THE WARRANTY IS FOR 60K AND WITH ONLY 35K THEY ARE READY FOR THE TRASH.

NHTSA complaint 1039366

I PURCHASED 4 YOKOHAMA GEOLANDER H/T-S ON A LOCAL REPAIR SHOP ON 02/2013. I TOOK MY VEHICLE IN FOR MY ANNUAL STATE SAFETY INSPECTION THIS YEAR ON 02/2015 I WAS TOLD AND IT WAS BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT MY TIRE ARE CRACKING BETWEEN THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE TREADS. THIS TREAD SEPARATION CRACKING IS AN UNSAFE CONDITION. THE SHOP CONTACTED TIRE COMPANY THAT SUPPLIED THEM THE TIRE AND THEY SAID THEY WOULD ONLY CREDIT ME 35% OF THE ORIGINAL TIRE PRICE THEY WOULD BE REPLACED WITH ANOTHER YOKOHAMA TIRE. THESE TIRES ARE 2 YEARS OLD AND HAVE 30,000 MILES ON THEM. IT SEEMS I AM BEING PUT IN DANGER IF I DON'T HAVE THEM REPLACED AND SEEMS I AM GETTING RIPPED OFF IF I DO HAVE THEM REPLACED.

NHTSA complaint 1165726

ON OCTOBER 6, 2015, I WAS TRAVELING ON I-70 IN SOUTHERN UTAH WHEN THE REAR DRIVER SIDE TIRE BLEW OUT. THE TIRE WAS A YOKOHAMA GEOLANDER G91, DOT FDF5 PC50814, SIZE P225/65R17/60H. THIS TIRE WAS ON MY 2015 MAZDA CX5 WHEN I PURCHASED IT IN LATE AUGUST 2014. IT HAD 10559 MILES ON IT. ROAD CONDITIONS AT THE TIME OF THE BLOW OUT WERE EXCELLENT AND THE ROAD WAS VERY SMOOTH AS IT HAD BEEN RECENTLY PAVED. THE TIRE WAS IN 3 PIECES, THE TWO SIDE WALLS AND THE BOTTOM TREAD. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF PUNCTURE. THE GENTLEMAN WHO ASSISTED IN CHANGING THE TIRE SAID HE WAS FREQUENTLY CALLED TO THAT AREA FOR FLAT TIRE ASSISTANCE, BUT HE HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THIS SEPARATION OF THE SIDEWALLS FROM THE TREAD. IT SEEMS THIS IS A FAIRLY COMMON PROBLEM WITH YOKOHAMA TIRES FROM MY READING OF OTHER COMPLAINTS.

NHTSA complaint 1238978

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

Cracking or dry rot; 3.9× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Blowout or sudden deflation; 1.7× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Sidewall failure; 1.9× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Yokohama Avid; 88 reports

All Yokohama tire failure analysis

FAQ

What goes wrong with Yokohama Geolandar tires?

Across 53 written complaints, the most common description is cracking or dry rot, in 36% of reports; about 3.9× as often as across all tire complaints. A single report can describe more than one problem.

Is the Yokohama Geolandar 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 Yokohama Geolandar tires fail?

Of the owners who stated an odometer reading, the middle report is at 16,600 miles, with 8 in 10 between 3,000 and 41,015 miles. These are failures, not typical tire life; nobody files a complaint about a tire that wore out normally.

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.