Lack of $43.13 Car Improvement Cost Young Husband of Graysville, Alabama His Life

Gary Skinner of Graysville, Alabama was an avid fisherman - he was a member of the Bass Fisherman's club - and had a love for music, says his wife Angela. But on July 28, 2005, Angela Skinner lost her husband when he died in a rollover accident at the young age of 48. As he drove his 1999 Ford Ranger around a downhill curve, his right rear tire blew out. He lost control of the vehicle, which left the road and began to roll. As his car rolled over, the roof crushed in on Gary causing a fatal head injury.

Now public General Motors internal documents show that the auto industry knew as early as 1966 that their roof design was so weak that in rollover accidents it crushed occupants to death. They could have fixed this defect for as little as $43.13. Instead, they chose to hide this information rather than spend a small amount of money to strengthen the roofs on their vehicles. In fact, the strength-to-weight ratios for another of Ford's vehicles, the Explorer, went down in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) has also chosen to do as little as possible to protect the lives of individuals like Gary. Under the Transportation Equity Act of 2005, Congress directed NHTSA to establish rules to reduce deaths and injuries caused by vehicle rollover accidents and to specifically propose a new standard for how strong a vehicle’s roof must be.

Currently, 10,000 people die and 24,000 people are injured every year in rollover accidents. Instead of acting to significantly reduce injuries as Congress directed, NHTSA proposed a weak “roof crush standard” that leaves safety at the status quo—70% of vehicles on the road currently meet the new proposed standard.

Still worse, the proposed rule marks an unprecedented power grab by a federal agency, preempting all state requirements and state tort law. The result: as long as a car manufacturer meets the proposed standard, no individual may bring a claim in any court if they are injured or killed because of a badly made roof.

In fact, the 1999 Ford Ranger that crushed Gary to death has a strength-to-weight ratio higher than the new rule proposed by NHTSA. Since his vehicle met (and exceeded) the new standard, Gary's family would not be able to hold Ford accountable in court for the design of their vehicle if the proposed rule had been in place.

This is a fundamental change in auto safety that all Americans should be concerned about. The automakers know they can make safer vehicles, they know how to make safer vehicles, but they don’t want to spend the money. NHTSA's rule says to the industry, if you knowingly put a roof design on the market that happens to meet a bare minimum standard but is defective and a husband or dad is lost in a rollover accident, the family can never hold the manufacturer accountable in court. Is this really what we want?

Updated December 6, 2005