“I think if Sophie hadn’t done everything she did in those eight years, everything would have been forgotten, and there would never have been anything, in the end. She does a job… I shoot her my hat.” Stephanie, who utters these words, lost her husband in a road accident. While Pascal Rochard, 44, was driving on the A36 motorway at the wheel of a heavy truck transporting sedans, the left front tire burst. Launched at 90 kilometers per hour, the car carrier crossed the guardrail and hit a tanker in the wrong direction. The cabin occupied by Jean-Paul Rollet, 53, Sophie’s husband, was crushed. For the two drivers, the shock was fatal.
This Friday, July 25, 2014, the road was dry, the weather sunny. The tires of the two semi-trailers were well inflated. What happened ? Was the tire that burst, a Marathon LHS II model from the American brand Goodyear, defective?
A solitary crusade against the American tire giant
In 2015, a first investigation led to a classification without follow-up, but Sophie Rollet refused to be satisfied with her conclusions. So begins a stubborn quest: every morning, behind her computer, in her house in Geney, in the Doubs, this mother of three children tracks down truck accidents caused by a tire burst.
By contacting the gendarmes, she identified at least seven accidents involving Goodyear tires from the Marathon LHS II range… The one that cost the lives of her husband and that of Stéphanie was therefore not an isolated tragedy? For the mother in the process of becoming a whistleblower, the questions follow one another: “What is the probability that we find the same, strictly identical tire in two different accidents? If there are two, couldn’t there be three or more?” This is the beginning of his investigation, and of a solitary crusade against the American tire giant.
In eight years, Sophie Rollet has amassed evidence, convinced the magistrates to reopen the case, obtained an expert report that points to manufacturing defects… The impressive file she has compiled is examined by the Besançon court: justice takes finally the relay.
Excerpt from “Alone against Goodyear”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on November 10, 2022.
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