Tri-City Herald, "Families work to prevent van accidents"

          A year ago today, two Prosser High School students, Belen Campos and Corinne Bardessono, died when a 15-passenger Ford van carrying them slid on black ice on Highway 395 near Ritzville and rolled.
          They were traveling to Cheney to tour Eastern Washington University with Upward Bound when the accident occurred.
           At first glance, their deaths appeared to be a tragic, unpreventable accident. But both families place the blame squarely on the 15-passenger Ford F-350 van the girls were riding in.
           Over the past three years, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued four safety warnings about the vans' rollover risk.
          Studies by the NHTSA showed that between 1990 and 2002, 1,576 of the extra-long vans were involved in fatal crashes causing 1,111 deaths. Of those, 349 were single-vehicle rollovers.
          In more than 80 percent of the fatal accidents, the 15-passenger vans, which were first introduced by Dodge in 1971, rolled over.
         Both families are taking legal action to keep the vans off the road.
          In June, the Bardessono family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., Budget Rent A Car, the state, the Prosser School District and the van driver, Tom Nguyen, in Spokane Superior Court.