<p>Recently my girlfriend’s 22 year old brother died in an SUV rollover. It was very tragic and my girlfriend’s family recently faced the decision to take legal action. From initial inspections and now during the “discovery” period of the trial (when Ford has to disclose all of its documents) they discovered that my girlfriend’s brother died because of the roof on the vehicle. Turns out that since the early 1980s Ford has been making its roofs with fiberglass. Guess what happens to the roof during a rollover? On average is collapses 20 inches. How far is your head from the roof typically? 5-7 inches. Any idea what happens when you roll over and the roof collapses on your head? </p>
<p>So I just wanted to let those of you who own Ford SUVs to really be careful or consider changing your car in the near future. It’s so sad to see that a company will sacrifice the lives of wonderful moms, dads, brothers, sisters, etc. just because it costs them less in legal battles than in costs of production with safer parts.</p>
<p>Bern, thank you for the alert.</p>
<p>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 216 is the standard that covers roof strength of vehicles. All vehicles built and sold within the United States (including Ford SUVs of the 1980s) must pass this standard. Statistically, a SEAT-BELTED occupant of a rollover accident fares extremely well, even though rollovers often occur at high vehicle speeds and energies. As an engineering consultant, I have witnessed a number of rollover crash tests that were performed and am very familiar with the relevant literature. The roof, per se, is not the primary factor that determines how far the roof will be displaced downward relative to the interior of the vehicle in a particular rollover accident. Instead, the “pillars” (i.e. the posts between the windshield, side windows, etc.) and structures such as the windshield itself keep the roof close to its pre-crash position.</p>
<p>Rollover accidents are almost always single vehicle accidents, commonly with a driver going off the road and then swerving too hard such that the vehicle goes out of control and subsequently trips (with the sides of the wheels encountering some surface such as a curb). While I sympathize with your girlfriend in the loss of her brother, there is certainly no reason to be alarmed that Ford SUVs (or any other manufacturer’s SUVs) are unsafe in rollover accidents. Tests have even been conducted with reinforced roofs and support structures to determine what benefit would result from strengthening the roof. It ends up that neck injuries tend to occur while an inverted vehicle’s roof is on the ground, and hence roof reinforcement does not play a major role in neck injuries. When lawsuits can result in verdicts of $100 million or more (even for a plaintiff who is drunk at the time of a single-vehicle accident), there is no way that any motor vehicle manufacturer could save money by intentionally building a defective vehicle. While I am an engineering consultant and have quite a bit of experience in this area, I have never worked for Ford and I certainly have no reason to defend them except for pointing out what I know.</p>
<p>The vast majority of fatalities in rollover accidents are unbelted, and many are either partially or completely ejected. Roof strength obviously plays no part in injury in such a scenario.</p>
<p>Although modern cars are dramatically safer than those of the 1960’s, it is impossible to design a vehicle in which serious injuries or death cannot occur. Even if a vehicle has a massively reinforced roof like that of a Hummer, an occupant can unfortunately sustain fatal neck injuries simply due to the compliance in the seat belts, if the accident is severe enough. And an unbelted occupant can sustain serious or fatal injuries in almost any rollover accident (although this usually does not occur).</p>
<p>My prayers are with your girtlfriend’s family.</p>
<p><a href=“Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com”>Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com;
<a href=“Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com”>Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com;
<p>The first link is to a series of articles that ran in my local paper (The Detroit News) last year on roll over accidents involving SUVs.</p>
<p>The second link is to the same paper (Mar. 29, '05) about the Ford Explorer and FMVSS 216. </p>
<p>I’m a computer guy, not an automotive engineer. Read and discuss…</p>
<p>pafather I appreciate your input and while normally I would not question your expertise recent events, documents I’ve seen, and recent inspections I would politely disagree with you. It has been proven in various hundreds of cases that the roof is just not safe and IT IS the cause of many serious injuries/deaths that could be prevented. In the majority of cases that I’ve researched or have been shown(especially those of Ford SUVs) the driver was driving safely, happed to swerve for some reason and were not ejected from the vehicle (they were wearing a seat belt) AND the deaths/injuries were caused by the roof which in mosts cases collapsed an average of 20 inches!!! Just think about it in your car how far is your head from the roof? Plus the FMVSS 216 you mentioned is outdated. The most recent case that you can read about is a case in FL (in forgetting the name - i’ll look it up for you). I am no expert but when thousands of people have been seriously injured/killed while wearing seat belts, etc. I question how safe those roofs are. The documents that I mentioned earlier are documents that the lawyer dealing with my gf’s case showed us. They are documents directly from Ford engineers stating that they do not think the roofs are safe and that something needs to be done about them if they want to prevent injuries. Something Ford never dealt with and just decided to neglect their engineers’ warnings…why would a company trying to sell cars not want to change this and make their cars safer…my guess is costs but as pafather mentioned I don’t know how significant the costs would be.</p>