Philippine Daily Inquirer, "A Roof-Crush Lawsuit"

          Despite multimillion-dollar lawsuits arising from rollover accidents involving sport utility vehicles in the United States, SUVs and pickup trucks continue to outsell passenger cars. A series of lawsuits have charged General Motors, Ford and other auto manufacturers with failing to protect occupants in rollovers of SUVs and pickups.
          The Detroit News cited federal statistics showing that an estimated 7,000 people are killed or seriously injured each year in rollovers in which the roof was crushed.
          The controversy over vehicle roof standards intensified when the media focused national attention on the sensational case of Derrick Thomas, a 33-year-old football star of the Kansas City Chiefs who died of cardio-respiratory arrest 16 days after being paralyzed from the chest down in a rollover accident in his 1999 Chevrolet Suburban. Eight months after Thomas' death, his mother filed a wrongful-death case versus GM and the Chevy dealership that sold him his Suburban. Thomas' mother alleged that the design of the Suburban's roof was defective and too weak to keep it from crushing down at least eight inches onto Thomas' head and causing severe injuries before he was ejected from the vehicle.
          Meanwhile in Washington, Congress and auto safety groups are urging the NHTSA to overhaul federal roof-strength standards that have not been updated since 1971, the Detroit News noted. One automaker that has taken the initiative to anticipate a new roof-strength law is Volvo, a company owned by Ford. The roof of Volvo's XC90 SUV is reinforced with boron, which is four times stronger than normal steel. In rollover tests, the XC90's reinforced roof was squashed but did not collapse, thereby limiting intrusion into the passenger space and keeping the cabin intact.