GEORGIA INJURY LAWYER

When the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration (NHTSA) first came into being, automakers were heavily regulated as then head of NHTSA, Joan Claybrook, a Ralph Nader protégé, went after dangerous vehicles like the Ford Pinto. Claybrook, who has been aptly described as the “most ardent champion of consumer protection and the common good,” has spent most of her life working to save the American consumer from one of the most significant dangers on the market today: SUV rollovers.

Recently retired as president of the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, she has worked on auto safety issues for over forty years and was the head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration during the Carter administration.

Scientifically, Claybrook explains that rollover crashes should be well survivable: “Forces felt by an occupant who has a rollover pretention restrain and who does not contact the roof are not as violent as those experienced in a frontal impact crash.”

Claybrook asserts that the physics of rollover crashes are indisputable. In her testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in 2008, she explained the elements of a rollover: “Rollover crashes occur over a 4-6 second time interval, whereas other crashes are over milliseconds. Consequently, the forces acting on occupants are relatively mild and the focus becomes threefold: (1) whether the restraint properly and safely keeps the occupant in the survival zone of the vehicle; (2) whether the vehicle structure maintains the occupant survival space; and (3) whether the portals of ejection, e.g., side windows, stay intact thus preventing exposure to partial ejection.”

Yet despite the fact that rollover fatalities can and should be avoidable, there has been a long history of the American auto industry resisting safety standards that would mitigate such fatalities. Additionally, “in this era of active products liability litigation and frequent media coverage of product safety issues, it is surprising that one kind of product-related accident has caused thousands of avoidable deaths and injuries but has received virtually no legal attention.”
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The alarming fact is that each year, more than 10,500 people die in SUV rollovers, and another 24,000 to 30,000 are seriously injured. And, families will keep being torn apart until the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration enforces a “comprehensive dynamic rollover standard that covers belt performance, door and glazing retention, and roof crush” and enforces adequate roof crush testing.

Several decades ago, rollover crashes were few: in 1969 there were just 1,400 deaths in rollover crashes because pickups were primarily driven as work vehicles and the SUV was not yet marketed as a passenger-carrying vehicle. But over the course of the latter end of the 20th century, the auto industry commenced on a strategic advertising campaign to convince the public that SUV’s were “the station wagon of the future.” Thus, a product originally suited for off-roading, outdoors terrain, became a ubiquitous sight driven by everyone from hip hop stars to soccer moms on urban freeways and suburban cul-de-sacs across America. As a result of this, families are losing loved ones at a rate of over 10,000 per year.

Starting almost two decades ago, the influential Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) alerted the industry that utility vehicles were rolling over at five times the rate of passenger cars. Currently, although rollovers account for less than three percent of passenger vehicles in all police-reported crashes, they make up about twenty three percent of passenger vehicles in fatal crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s latest report documents that in 2007, there were 10,194 fatalities in rollover crashes, accounting for approximately 1/3 of all highway occupant fatalities.” As of this year, “motor vehicle accidents are the number one killer of people aged 3 to 33, and rollover crashes account for a disproportionate and unnecessary number of these deaths.”

Why are SUV rollovers so deadly? The primary reason lies with the design of the vehicle. The narrow wheel base and a high center of gravity, gives them the propensity to ‘trip’ even at a low rate of speed when it grazes a curb, slightly swerves or hits a soft shoulder. However the most fatal feature of the SUV occurs from the result of the rollover: roof-crush. Without roll bars or other reinforcement, the top of the SUV roof crushes down on the heads and necks of the passengers when the full weight of the vehicle lands on it. When that happens, fatal consequences occur.

If the roof is too weak, the vehicle support pillars will collapse, crushing the roof and doors, including areas which hold the seat belt mechanism in place. The doors and roof, pushed down like an accordion, will cause the seatbelts (attached to the top of the roof and window) to break, no longer holding the passenger in place. Additionally, the crushing roof will cause the windshield and side windows to break open, creating portals where occupants, without the protection of working seatbelts, will be ejected. Consequently, two outcomes generally occur: either the passengers will be fatally ejected from the vehicle; or the roof will crush down onto the heads and spine of those trapped inside.

Despite these risks, the auto industry refused for decades to reinforce roofs or even acknowledge the deadly dangers of roof crush despite pleas from numerous consumer rights groups. Furthermore, over the past several decades despite empirical evidence to the contrary, the auto industry systematically denied the dangers of roof-crush and deliberately pressured federal regulators and lawmakers to otherwise protect the public from this avoidable product design.
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Yesterday the United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned owners of recalled Toyotas to immediately stop driving their vehicles and take them into the Toyota dealership for immediate repair.

Mr. LaHood testified before Congress that Toyota was slow to address the safety problems with its gas pedals and it took pressure from the U.S. government that forced Toyotal to recall millions of its vehicles.

LaHood described Toyota as being “a little safety deaf” during the investigation and reported that Toyota was so resistant that it took federal safety officials from the U.S. government travelling to Japan to “wake them up” to the very seriousness of the danger.

Lahood further reported to Congress that the recall occurred because of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal government agency that worked to protect consumers from these dangerous vehicles by meeting with the top officials of Toyota in Japan.

LaHood also stated that the U.S. government considered civil penalties to Toyota but would not provide specifics. Former NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook said Toyota has been resistant to regulation for a long time and been extremely secretive.

On Monday Toyota apologized about the problem and announced a repair which will insert a steel piece into the gas pedal to resolve excess friction that can cause the pedal to become stuck.

Federal data show these complaints against Toyota have doubled last year alone.
A government survey of Lexus owners found dozens of reports owners pressing hard on the brakes but failing to stop the sudden acceleration of their vehicles. This led to a Toyotal recall for 55,000 Lexus vehicles in 2007. Then in August a California Highway Patrol officer and his family were killed in a high-speed crash aboard a 2009 Lexus ES350 which hit speeds exceeding 120 mph, struck another SUV vehicle, drove off an embankment, rolled several times, and exploded in flames while a family member was calling 911.

Since that time, there are increasing reports of runaway acceleration Toyota and Lexus vehicles not on the recall list. In October, Toyota recalled more than 4 million vehicles and the recall has since grown to more than 5 million vehicles. Congress has now launched an investigation into the risk to the public and federal safety officials are widening their investigation of Toyota’s sticky gas pedals.

In Georgia, Toyota manufacturers would be held strictly liable for claims in these defective product actions. The law in Georgia seeks to protect the consumer by shifting the burden of the loss to the wrongdoer, i.e. the manufacturer of the defective product that caused the injuries. The essential elements of this legal claim are: first, the manufacture of the product (Toyota manufactured the cars); second, a defective product (the vehicles are in fact defective hence the recalls); third, an injury to a natural person proximately caused by the defect (multiple Toyota owners suffered injuries due to this defect); fourth, a sale of the product as a new product (Toyota dealers sold these new vehicles off their dealership lots); and fifth, the existence of the defect at the time the product left the manufacturer’s control (the defect was present when Toyota sold the car to consumers.)
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