The Galveston County Daily News, "Ford hit with historic $16.6M Explorer verdict"

          A 405th State District Court jury hit the Ford Motor Co. with a $16.6 million judgment in the case of a rollover crash that killed a boy, 13.
          The April 2003 wreck involved a Ford Explorer purchased at McRee Ford in Dickinson. Dianne Reding rolled the vehicle after what she said was a series of swerves that started when she tried to avoid hitting a deer near Canyon Lake.
          Defense attorneys for Ford said Reding’s reckless driving caused the resulting crash that killed Andrew Reding, the driver’s son. However, Galveston attorney Tony Buzbee, representing plaintiff Reding, said Ford had known for years that the Explorer’s tires were too narrow to be safe. More...

Detroit Free Press, "Group calls for Ford to unseal safety tests"

          A Washington auto-safety group launched a new effort Thursday to unseal safety tests from Ford Motor Co.'s Volvo division, saying the tests highlight flaws in a new standard for vehicle roof strength backed by federal regulators and automakers.
          While the contents of the documents are well known, safety advocates say making them publicly available would force the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to rethink its new rule for how well car and truck roofs should protect people in rollovers. More...

Automotive News, "Senators rebuke NHTSA on tougher roofs proposal"

          Two key senators are warning federal regulators that their effort to use tougher roof-strength rules to block rollover lawsuits against automakers may not be legal.
          The warning to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. They are the chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Committee. More...

Detroit News, "[Ford] Explorer roof called too weak"

         Many of Ford Motor Co.'s best-selling Explorer SUVs from the 1999 to 2001 model years likely do not meet a crucial safety requirement intended to protect passengers in rollover crashes, a safety engineering firm claimed in a petition filed with the federal government.
         Safety Analysis and Forensic Engineering, which performs research for plaintiffs suing automakers, says internal Ford documents show that a substantial number of 1999 to 2001 Explorers likely do not comply with the federal vehicle roof strength standard. More...

Reuters, "GM recalls nearly 106,000 SUVs - Chevy Trailblazers, GMC Envoys may have faulty door latch"

          General Motors said on Friday that it was recalling nearly 106,000 sport utility vehicles in the United States and Canada to fix a rear door latch that may not close properly due to corrosion.
          Alan Adler, a spokesman for the world's largest automaker, said the 105,893 vehicles affected by the potential safety defect included Chevrolet TrailBlazer EXT and GMC Envoy XL SUVs from the 2002-2003 model years.
          He said one alleged injury had been caused by the faulty door latch.
          A small number of 2003 model Isuzu Ascender SUVs are also affected, Adler said. GM builds the Ascender for Isuzu Motors Ltd.
          A total of about 98,000 of the recalled vehicles were registered or sold in Northeast and Midwest U.S. states, where corrosion can occur due to winter road salt.
          An estimated 7,893 vehicles sold in eastern Canada are also affected, Adler said.

The New York Times, "Safety Decoder: How to Make Sense of the Crash Ratings"

          The Ford Escape is "a genius on anything from dirt to gravel to granite," at least according to a recent ad in Maxim magazine. Not only does it have "brains for rocks," whatever that means, it has a computer that checks for "wheel slippage 200 times a second."
          Not that any of that helped on the government's rollover test. The Escape, a sport-utility vehicle, tipped up on two wheels during the test, a potentially deadly result. The ad does not mention that, of course. More...

Bloomberg, "Ford Loses $42 Million Texas Verdict in Rollover Suit"

          A Texas jury today found that Ford Motor Co. should pay $42 million to the family of a 10-year-old boy who was killed when he was partly ejected from a Ford Expedition in a 2004 rollover accident.
          The boy, Matthew Marroquin, was wearing his seat belt when the vehicle's side window shattered and the boy hit the ground as it rolled, his family said.
         The Corpus Christi, Texas, state court jury awarded $22 million in actual damages and $20 million in punitive damages, finding the vehicle defective.
         The suit is one of a growing number claiming automakers should have used stronger glass in side and rear windows to prevent ejections and partial ejections. The family's attorneys said laminated glass would have protected the boy.
         "Ford Motor Co. has ignored the safety of its consumers for over 30 years," said Mikal Watts, a lawyer for the family. "Ford knew that the use of tempered glass, and not laminated glass, created a dangerous environment for their consumers."
          The verdict is the third-largest in a product defect claim against an automaker in 2005, according to Bloomberg data.
          The jury deliberated six hours and found Ford 90 percent responsible for the boy's death.

CNN/Money, "Ford recalling 3.8 million vehicles; Trucks and SUVs recalled for cruise control switch that could cause fires"

          Ford Motor Co. is recalling about 3.8 million trucks and SUVs to fix a cruise control switch that could overheat and burn even when the vehicles are not running.
          The switches were the subject of a recent CNN investigation. (Ford document: Millions of vehicles have fire risk part)
          Ford said that its investigation found that brake fluid could leak into electronical components of the speed control system causing them to corrode.
          "In rare cases, the corrosion in the electrical components can lead to increasing resistance and higher electrical current flow through the system. Together, these conditions could lead to overheating and, possibly, a fire at the switch," the company said in announcing the recall.
          Ford is in the process of acquiring parts necessary to repair the problem and, in the meantime, is advising owners of the effected vehicles to take their vehicle to a dealer to have the cruise control system deactivated.
          The vehicles included in the recall are 1994-2002 Ford F-150s, 1997-2002 Ford Expeditions, 1998-2002 Lincoln Navigators and 1994-1996 Ford Broncos equipped with factory-installed speed control.

The Detroit News, "Danger Under the Hood; A little girl dies; attention turns to a faulty Ford part; More than 500 fires reported in pickups, SUVs; probe centers on cruise-control switch"

          The noise woke Tanika Washington just before dawn, a sound like heavy raindrops beating on the roof.
          But when she sat up in bed, she realized it was the crackling of fire.
          "I think something's burning," she said to her husband, Juan. "I think the house is on fire."
          And when Juan opened their bedroom door, a wall of fire was on the other side, raging through the hallway of their split-level home. In the minutes that followed, the house in northern Georgia burned to the ground, and four members of the Washington family escaped with their lives.
          But Blake Washington, the couple's 4-year-old daughter, died in her bed in the blaze on New Year's Day 2004, the victim of what baffled local investigators said was a fire of undetermined origin.
          Nobody suspected that clues may have existed in the smoldering remains of the family's 2001 Ford F-150 pickup until a federal investigation of Ford vehicle fires became public earlier this year.
          With millions of Ford pickups and SUVs now under scrutiny for dangerous fires, the Washington case may prove to be a tragic example of the consequences of a hidden automotive defect.
          On Friday, the Washington family filed a wrongful death suit in a Georgia state court against Ford Motor Co., alleging that a defective cruise-control deactivation switch in the F-150 caused the fire that killed Blake.
          "We expect to prove that the physical evidence is consistent with the fire originating in the Ford," said Mark Chalos of the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein in Nashville, Tenn. For Blake Washington's parents, the lawsuit is all about getting to the truth behind the tragedy that changed their lives forever. "We lost a child and nothing's going to bring her back, no amount of money," said Tanika Washington. "I want somebody to give a damn that we lost our baby."

To read the full article on the Detroit News website, click here.

Associated Press, "Government probes Ford SUVs, Mustangs"

          The government has opened an investigation into the acceleration of some Ford Motor Co. sport utility vehicles and the company's Mustang sports car, officials said Tuesday.
          The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a posting on its Web site that it was investigating reports that the engine throttle became stuck in the open position in Ford Explorers and Mercury Mountaineers, causing unwanted vehicle acceleration.
          The probe involves about 690,000 Explorers and Mountaineers from the 2002 model year. NHTSA said its preliminary investigation was prompted by 15 complaints and one reported crash.

Los Angeles Times, "SUVs Improve in Rollover Ratings; Regulators credit the popularity of 'crossover' vehicles, which have lower centers of gravity"

          Car manufacturers are doing a better job designing sport utility vehicles to resist rollover accidents, U.S. safety regulators said Wednesday.
          Popular SUVs have earned increasingly high marks in government rollover tests over the last four years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.
          The number of SUVs with a four-star rollover rating out of a possible five stars grew from just one in 2001 to 24 in newly released rollover test results for 2005 model year vehicles, the safety administration said.
          Rollovers represent only a small fraction of crashes on U.S. roads but a quarter of all traffic deaths. The safety administration has projected that 10,296 Americans were killed in rollover accidents in 2004. Of those, 2,821 were in SUVs, an increase of nearly 7% over the previous year, according to the agency.
          Runge attributed much of the improved scores to the recent introduction of crossover vehicles, which are styled more like station wagons and tend to have lower centers of gravity.
          But Runge said it would take years before the improved ratings translate into fewer deaths because it takes about 25 years for the U.S. fleet to turn over.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Singer's mom sues SUV maker"

          The mother of the late hip-hop music star Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes is suing an automaker alleging it ignored warnings that its SUV was prone to roll over.
          Lopes, a rapper in the Grammy Award-winning Atlanta trio TLC, died in a one-car crash in 2002 while driving a red 2001 Mitsubishi Montero she rented while vacationing in Honduras.
          The lawsuit against the Japanese company and its North America subsidiary claims Lopes was driving at a normal speed when she swerved to miss a car stopped in front of her, causing her SUV to flip.
          Savannah attorney Jeff Harris, who is representing the singer's mother, Wanda Lopes-Colemon, plans to use a study on vehicle rollovers to bolster his argument that Mitsubishi should have warned consumers about the potentially fatal design flaw.
          Consumer Reports gave the 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Limited a "not acceptable" safety rating after testing the model and six other SUVs using sharp turns to simulate what it calls real-world emergencies. Only the Mitsubishi appeared prone to rollovers, the study claims.
          Lopes was in Honduras with an entourage of about 12, including members of Egypt, a fledging female hip-hop group based in Philadelphia. They were filming the vacation to possibly use as part of a video.

Associated Press, "Toyota Recalling 750,000 Truck, SUVs"

          Toyota Motor Corp., in one of its largest safety recalls ever, said Tuesday it is recalling more than 750,000 pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles because of problems with the front suspension that could hinder steering.
          The company said the recall covers 774,856 vehicles in the United States, including the 2001-2004 model years of the Tacoma, the 2001-2002 versions of the 4Runner and the 2002-2004 model years of the Tundra and Sequoia.
          Toyota said the surface of a ball joint which connects to the front suspension may have been scratched when it was manufactured, which could lead to wear and tear over time. Any excessive wear or looseness in the joint could force drivers to exert more effort when steering, allow the vehicle to drift and increase the amount of noise from the suspension.
          Ming-Jou Chen, a Toyota spokeswoman, said the company had confirmed six cases in which the condition existed in the suspension. There have been no injuries associated with the problems.
          Toyota said it planned to conduct a similar recall of the affected vehicles in Canada, Japan, Australia and other countries, but did not immediately have the number of vehicles that would be covered outside the U.S.
          Chen said it was one of the largest recalls in company history.

The Mountain Press, "Family remains hospitalized after Wyoming accident"

          A Seymour couple and their oldest son remain hospitalized here more than a week after the family survived a single-vehicle accident just outside Buffalo, Wyoming.
          At about 2 p.m. on May 5, on the way from Smithers, British Columbia, to Colorado Springs to host a conference for their New Heart Expressions ministry, Ron Browning swerved the family's 15-passenger van into the median when an antelope jumped into the road, causing the van to flip and throwing some family members from the car.
          Everyone was wearing seat belts but police reported the force of the accident broke some of the belts.
          Three of the children were treated and released the same day without injury. Ron Browning, however, is in a coma, and his wife remains in the hospital after having had surgery for a shattered pelvis.
          Another son, Bruce, 12, was in a coma but is now awake and responding to commands. He had a compound fracture in his leg. The family's oldest daughter is out of the hospital but wearing a back brace for several broken vertebrae. Seven-month-old Kimber had a collapsed lung, which was reinflated, and she is now out of the hospital, said Apperson.
          The family is not entirely medically insured and expects to spend at least six more months in Wyoming, he said.

The New York Times, "Lawsuit Documents and a Study Raise Questions on the Safety of Ford Explorer Roofs"

          A new study and documents from a recent lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company raise fresh questions about the safety of roofs on Ford Explorers. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a study on Wednesday that accuses Ford of ignoring evidence that stronger roofs would lead to fewer injuries.
          Also on Wednesday, a plaintiffs' lawyer in several prominent rollover lawsuits said he had obtained internal Ford documents that show that several years ago the company rebuffed assertions from its Volvo subsidiary that stronger vehicle roofs prevent injuries and deaths in rollover accidents. In 1999, Ford purchased Volvo, the Swedish automaker known for producing some of the safest vehicles on the road. In addition, documents connected with a trial this year involving Ford show that the automaker decided not to strengthen roof supports on the Explorer, a sport utility vehicle, although engineers at the company recommended the change.
          The new study, which was written by Martha Bidez, a biomedical engineering professor at the University of Alabama, takes issue with that assertion. "Stated in the simplest terms, roof crush can and does cause catastrophic injury and death," the study states. "The science is irrefutable." The study re-examined Ford's own rollover crash data from 1998 and 1999 and concluded that the most catastrophic neck injuries occurred when the Explorer's roof caved in and smashed into the crash dummy's head. It further found that in test cases where the Explorer's roof was not crushed, no serious injuries were recorded in the dummies.
          The study criticizes the auto industry's commitment to safety, noting at one point that while car companies have said roof strength has nothing to do with injuries in rollovers "they routinely add roll bars to their test vehicles to ensure that roofs don't crush test drivers in the event of a rollover accident." Consumer groups, which have long lobbied for tougher rollover standards, say that roof collapse is the leading cause of death in rollovers.

Reuters, "Hyundai, Kia, recall 30,000 SUVs in U.S.; Problem with anti-rollover devices cited"

          Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. and Kia Motors Corp. are recalling more than 38,000 sport utility vehicles on the U.S. market because of a problem with their electronic stability program, or anti-rollover devices, federal safety regulators said Thursday.
          The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said vehicles from the Korean automakers affected by the recalls included 30,558 Hyundai Tucson and 7,619 Kia Sportage SUVs. Both are from the 2005 model year.
          The problem with the electronic stability program may cause the engine on the SUVs to reduce power automatically, and it could also cause a brake on one of the wheels to be applied without brake pedal activation by the driver, NHTSA said in an advisory on its Web site, the agency said.
          "Brake application caused by inadvertent ESP activation may result in a crash," the agency said.

Times-Union (Jacksonville), "Defects in Explorer blamed for fatal crash; $10.2 million awarded"

          A Jacksonville jury returned a $10.2 million verdict against Ford Motor Co. Friday, finding defects in its Explorer's roof and seat belt systems. After the four-week trial, the jury said the death of a Jacksonville woman could have been prevented if the roof had not collapsed. The plaintiff's attorneys are calling the verdict the first in the nation finding fault with the popular SUV's roof.
          Clair S. Duncan was traveling on Interstate 95 in Virginia to watch her brother graduate from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., when the 2000 Explorer she was driving swerved to miss a Winnebago. The Explorer then tipped and rolled five times, with the roof collapsing, killing Duncan.
          Her husband and sister had minor orthopedic injuries, the Duncan family's lawyer said. All were wearing their seat belts.
          At trial, the jury was presented internal Ford documents showing Explorer had the weakest roof of any SUV and that the company's engineers had recommended that its roof be strengthened. Counsel for Duncan stated he hopes the verdict will push Ford to make stronger roofs for the Explorer and made a seat belt system that better holds passengers in place.

Reuters, "GM's Blazer Ranked Deadliest Car on U.S. Roadways"

          The two-door Chevrolet Blazer from General Motors Corp. has the highest driver death rate of any passenger vehicle on U.S. roadways, a research group with links to the insurance industry said on Tuesday.
          The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (news - web sites) based that conclusion, and its embarrassing result for the world's largest automaker, on an extensive study of passenger vehicles from the 1999-2002 model years.
          The study focused on the rate of driver deaths in various types of crashes, including both single- and multiple-vehicle accidents.
          The overall driver death rate, for 199 models studied during the 2000-2003 calendar years, was 87 per million registered vehicles annually, the Insurance Institute said.
          Weighing in at more than three times the overall rate, the Insurance Institute said the two-door, two-wheel-drive Blazer -- a midsize sport utility vehicle -- had an average of 308 driver deaths per million.
          The Blazer also had the highest rate of driver deaths in rollover accidents at 251 per million.

New York Times, "Is the Car Unsafe, or the Driver?"

          One way of reading the new report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is that the Mercedes E-Class sedan has the safest design of any car or truck and the two-door Chevrolet Blazer the worst. Another way to read the report, to be released Tuesday, is that E-Class drivers tend to drive more carefully than Blazer drivers.
          The report, which analyzed the driver death rates of 199 vehicle models, gave an uncommon level of specificity for a crash study. The study found that in almost every vehicle class "the death rate for the worst vehicle was at least twice as high as the rate for the best." For instance, among midsize SUV's with four-wheel drive, the Toyota 4Runner had 12 deaths per million registered vehicles annually, compared with 134 for the two-door Ford Explorer.
          The two-door Chevy Blazer had 308 deaths per million registered vehicles annually, the most of any vehicle in the study. "The two-door Blazer is an old design, so it doesn't have the latest crashworthiness features built into it," said Adrian Lund, the chief operating officer of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Further, two-door SUV's tend to be less stable than four-door versions. On the other hand, "two-wheel-drive SUV's are cheaper vehicles and they tend to get driven by younger males." Young males are the highest risk group of drivers, Mr. Lund said.
          But the Blazer - not to be confused with the more recently designed Chevrolet Trailblazer - has also not performed well on crash tests, where driver behavior is not a factor. The SUV received the lowest of four ratings in the institute's frontal crash test and only one out of five stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in its most recent rollover test.
          Pound for pound, cars are safer than SUV's because SUV's ride higher off the ground and have a greater tendency to roll over than cars. Rollovers are particularly deadly, leading to one of every three deaths in motor vehicle crashes. Large cars, and particularly luxury cars, have lower than average fatality rates.
          Smaller cars and smaller SUV's tend to have higher fatality rates than medium-size and large models. Large SUV's tend to perform well because of their girth, though other studies have shown that that also makes them particularly lethal to the occupants of vehicles they strike. The Ford Excursion, one of the largest SUV's made, had 107 driver deaths per million registered vehicles annually, significantly above average.

San Antonio Express News, "Zavala jurors hit Ford for $28 million"

          A Zavala County, Texas jury took less than six hours Tuesday to slap Ford Motor Co. with a $28 million verdict, finding the manufacturer 90 percent responsible for the deaths of two young people in a rollover wreck in May 2003. The jury ordered Ford to pay the families of the victims, and awarded another $3 million in damages against a second defendant, Saul Guerrero Jr., who was driving the 2000 Explorer and was deemed 10 percent responsible. The award, approved by 10 of the 11 jurors, came despite evidence indicating Guerrero had been drinking before the accident and was driving at an unsafe speed. In addition, none of the four occupants was wearing a seat belt.
          Plaintiff's lawyers had asked for up to $100 million in damages, arguing most of the blame lay with the automaker for continuing to use tempered side
glass despite learning more than 30 years ago that laminated glass reduced the risk of passengers being ejected in a wreck.
         The entire panel agreed that Ford should have begun using a safer glass in its side windows years ago. Thrown from the vehicle and killed were Corina Garcia and Diana Alicia Alonzo, both 19. Passenger Arturo Guerrero, 18, and driver Saul Guerrero Jr., 19, were also ejected but not seriously hurt.

San Francisco Chronicle, "Ford recalls nearly 800,000 pickups and SUVs because of fire risk"

          Ford Motor Co. is recalling nearly 800,000 pickups and sport utility vehicles because the cruise control switch could short circuit and cause a fire under the hood, the automaker said. In an interview Friday from Deltona, Fla., broadcast on NBC's "Today" show, F-150 owner Bob Garcia described how flames engulfed his truck at his home while the ignition was turned off. The intense fire also damaged his garage.
          "It caught on fire inside the garage all by itself," Garcia said. "No key in it." During the interview, NBC showed a videotape dated last month that showed the damage from the blaze. Ford will notify owners of the recall in February, and dealers will deactivate the cruise control switch for free. Once the company has an adequate supply of replacement switches, it will send another letter notifying owners that they can get their switches replaced. Ford said cruise control will be disabled once the switch is deactivated.