Articles Posted in Defective Auto Products

Ford Motor Co. is recalling almost 1.2 million vans, sport utility vehicles and heavy-duty pickup trucks because of a faulty engine sensor that could cause sudden stalling and cause drivers to lose control of their vehicles, according to a news report in the watchdog Web site Consumeraffairs.com.

The automaker reported to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) that these defective vehicles could stall without a warning very likely causing a crash, the Web site article said. It also cited an NHTSA report that says that the Ford vehicles’ camshaft position sensor located on the engine could function intermittently and lead to an engine stall and potential auto accident. The sensor in question is an electrical component that helps control the fuel flow into the engine.

This most recent recall reportedly includes vehicles built between 1997 and 2003. Among the recalled vehicles are Ford’s E-Series full-size van, the Excursion SUV and the F-450 Super Duty pickup truck. This hardly comes as a surprise to our personal injury law firm, which has been conducting independent and expensive crash tests on Ford vehicles for many years now. At Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys, we’ve tested Explorers, Expeditions and Excursions and found that these vehicles have dangerous defects.
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A defective seat mounting or restraint system is now suspected to be the cause of death of Gavin Fletcher, a popular Times Colonist sports editor, who was ejected from his Nissan Infiniti along with his driver’s seat when the Nissan crashed last year according to an article in the Times Colonist.

The Times Colonist quotes British Columbia coroner Rose Stanton, as saying their investigation has centered on mechanical issues and ” … that the cause of death may be partially as a result of a mechanical failure in Mr. Fletcher’s car.” The report goes on to say that Stanton is waiting on a response from experts who have been analyzing Fletcher’s Nissan Infiniti.

Reports of the accident investigation indicate that Fletcher was wearing his seatbelt and traveling the speed limit at the time of the accident. He apparently lost control of his vehicle, slid backwards striking a rock wall and that he and the driver’s seat were violently ejected through the rear windshield. Fletcher died instantly.
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Ford Motor Co. earlier this month recalled 3.6 million passenger cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans because of a defective cruise control switch, according to an Associated Press news report. Problems with the cruise control switch have been reported over the years now and there have been numerous reports of vehicle fires because of the faulty switches as well.

In January 2005, Ford recalled 6 million vehicles because of the engine fires linked to the cruise control systems in their trucks, SUVs and cars. The latest recall covers 16 brands of cars, sport utility vehicles and trucks from model years 1992 to 2004. The models include the Ford Ranger, Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis, Lincoln Town Car, Lincoln Mark VIII, Ford Taurus SHO, Mercury Capri, Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer, Ford Explorer Sport and Explorer Sport Trac, Ford E-150-350, Ford E-450, Ford Bronco, Ford F-150 Lightning, some models of F-Series trucks and Ford F53 Motor.

This recall brings the total number of vehicles recalled for this problem to 10.5 million since 1999. According to Ford, none of the vehicles involved in this recall have experienced an abnormal number of fires. How many reports did they get of these fires? According to a Ford spokesman, they don’t have an exact number. That’s interesting. Almost 11 million vehicles recalled and they’re not documenting the complaints? I don’t buy that for a second.
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Looks like three tragedies flowed from an August 6, 2005 fire truck accident. A 1987 Spartan fire truck driven by Riverside firefighter Michael Arizaga hydroplaned off Interstate 10 near Highway 60 resulting in the death of Riverside firefighter Chris Kanton. Other firefighters in the fire truck were injured as well, according to the Press Enterprise.

The first tragedy was the loss of the life of firefighter Chris Kanton. Chris was only 23-years old. He lived in Temecula, California.

The second tragedy was that of Michael Arizaga who was charged by the Riverside District Attorney’s office with manslaughter. The DA’s office claimed that it was Arizaga’s negligence that caused Kanton’s death in the fire truck accident. The California Highway Patrol report states that the truck was speeding in suddenly rainy conditions, going 45 mph and that neither Arizaga nor Kanton were wearing seatbelts when the accident occurred, according to the Press Enterprise. Arizaga was responsible for his crew wearing seat belts according to the CHP.
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Earlier this month a Florida jury awarded $32.5 million to a man who suffered severe brain injuries when the seatbelt shoulder restraint in his 1993 Ford Escort failed during a head-on collision 11 years ago, according to an article published in the legal journal, Lawyers USA. The award came for 37-year-old Mark Force after more than a decade after the accident and two failed trials.

The first trial held in 2003 ended in Ford Motor Co.’s favor. But the appellate court, citing improper jury instruction in 2004 sent it back to trial court. But a second trial ended in a hung jury last year. The most recent trial this month lasted eight days when the six-person jury deliberated for half a day before finding Ford and Mazda – which designed the defective seatbelt system – liable for Force’s severe head injuries.

The plaintiff’s attorney says key evidence in this case included internal documents from Ford and Mazda – 45 complaints about Ford Escort’s seatbelt system. This evidence reportedly convinced jurors that the seatbelt retractor in American Escorts was defective and lacked the safety features used on the same vehicle in Canada. Ford, of course, plans to appeal the verdict. Ford’s attorneys say the seatbelt did its job and in fact saved Force’s life by preventing him from being ejected from the car.
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It all started with pet food, moving on to toothpaste and toy trains. Now, a lawsuit says cheap tires made in China caused a fatal traffic accident in Pennsylvania, killing two and injuring two. The tires in question were sold under the names Westlake, Telluride, Compass and YKS, according to an article in the consumer watchdog Web site.

And now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered the recall of as many as 450,000 tires purchased from a Chinese manufacturer Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co.

The case sounds a lot like the Firestone tire recall of 2000 when defective tires were said to have caused a series of accidents and rollovers, many involving the Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle. The lawsuit alleges that the Hangzhou “deliberately and secretly removed a safety feature from these tires,” which caused the accident. The tires were manufactured by China’s Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. and imported by Foreign Tire Sales Inc. (FTS), of Union, N.J. FTS says a crucial safety feature was omitted from as many as 450,000 tires it imported from the Chinese company since 2002.

FTS has filed another lawsuit in a New Jersey court seeking to shift all liability in this case to the Chinese company. The key question in this lawsuit is about a six-millimeter layer of rubber placed between the tire’s steel belts meant to strengthen the tire, which FTS says Hangzhou removed without notifying them.

Aside from a larger than usual number of complaints from customers, there was at least one other accident involving these tires when an ambulance crashed in May 2006 where a blown tire caused the emergency vehicle to roll over. FTS officials say they stopped buying tires from the Chinese company in June 2006.
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The United States Senate has proposed a bill that would require automakers to increase fuel economy over 40% to 35 miles per gallon. The new regulation, if passed by the House, would apply to all sized vehicles-cars, trucks, and SUVs.

One of the major concerns by consumers is that their choice of ‘size’ will be impacted by the bill, but according to David Friedman, director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, he “…would expect them [cars] to look a lot like they do today, the same size, the same acceleration and the same or even better safety.” Friedman added that he believes the cars will “…have better technology, better engines, more efficient transmissions and stronger aluminum bodies”, but they may cost more.

The proposed legislation seeks to research ways to improve the use of lithium-ion batteries, like the kind used in laptop computers, but if the cars are plugged into electric sockets will the costs in electricity eclipse the savings in gas? Some studies suggest that averaging the cost of fuel and electricity could bring the cost down to the equivalent of $1/gallon.

While automakers are balking and lobbying hard against the fuel economy provision in the Senate bill, as proposed, because they believe they will be unable to change the mix of cars available to the buying public in the showrooms of 2020. Eric Ridenour, Chief Operating Office at Chrysler Group, indicates that right now 3 out of 4 vehicles are built on truck frames and the company will have to decide whether or not to keep selling some of its larger vehicles in light of the proposed regulations. Ridenour clearly believes that the larger family-sized vehicles will be the ones most at risk, and that in the end vehicles will be lighter and smaller.
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An accident on the Pomona (60) Freeway took the life of a man as his 1988 Volvo apparently blew a tire and hit a big rig. According to an article posted on the MSNBC Web site, the 49-year old man, James Ong of Moreno Valley, was heading west on the freeway and was near the Fairway Drive exit at about noon Monday when the incident occurred.

CHP Officer Patrick Kimball was quoted in the article saying the car which was doing 60 mph, lost control after blowing its right rear tire and moved suddenly across from the No. 2 lane onto the No. 4 lane. The big rig on the No. 4 lane traveling at about 50 mph hit the passenger side of the car. The impact pushed the car to a concrete drainage ditch and caused the big rig to land on top of the car’s roof, Kimball said.

While, firefighters who had rushed to the scene, cut Ong out of his car using hydraulic tools, he had already received major head trauma and was declared dead, the article reported. The big rig’s driver, Robert Bokkes, 67, of Aguanga was not injured.

The accident with its horrific and tragic end does underscore a very common and hazardous issue that affects all drivers – the proper maintenance of vehicle tires. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), low tire pressure-related crashes are to blame for 660 fatalities and 33,000 injuries every year. NHTSA estimates that about one in four cars and one in three light trucks has at least one significantly under inflated tire.
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A major class action lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., claiming that the auto maker lied to consumers about the safety of its Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle models, threatens to send the struggling corporation over the edge, according to an article in The News & Observer. The suit, set for trial next month, is being brought on behalf of about 414,000 Explorer buyers in California who say Ford officials engaged in deceptive advertising by marketing Ford as a safe vehicle when they knew that it was more susceptible to roof crush and rollovers.

Ford’s trial team claims that this lawsuit threatens the $2 billion Ford earned in the 1990s from Explorers it built and sold in California and puts the automaker on the brink of complete collapse. Plaintiffs say Ford should be penalized irrespective of the financial impact because lives have been lost and major injuries have resulted because of “Ford’s deception.”

Personal injury attorneys and experts alike agree that the Explorer is one of the most dangerous vehicles ever produced in the country. Research has consistently shown that these SUVs have a tendency to flip over even when speeds are not remarkably high. Ford decided to continue with its faulty design because the company’s executives knew that it was simply more profitable to do so. To make matters worse, the company produced a marketing campaign to sell the Explorer as a safe and reliable vehicle for daily use. The class action lawsuit alleges further stating that Ford’s deception cost California’s car buyers about $500 million when their vehicles’ values plummeted once the defects became more widely known.

According to experts who were consulted for this lawsuit, the value of each of these 414,569 SUVs dropped from $1,000 to $1,300 beyond normal depreciation. The lawsuit does not seek specific damages. According to the News & Observer article, the judge has broad discretion to order Ford to pay, if he finds that the auto maker did in fact violate state consumer protection laws. This lawsuit is the first of its kind to go to trial and is being closely watched, the article states.
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A woman was run over by her own SUV outside a 7-Eleven in Pacific Beach Thursday afternoon because of a defective parking brake, according to an article in the San Diego Union Tribune. The tragic incident occurred outside the store when the woman got out of her 2005 Lexus sport utility vehicle. As soon as she got out, the vehicle started to roll backward, according to the report.

Officials said the woman had set the parking brake before she got out of the vehicle, but that she had left the SUV in neutral gear. The woman then attemped to stop the moving SUV by jumping into the driver’s seat but fell to the ground and was run over by the front tires, the article states. Officials, who investigated the seemingly freak incident, later found that the SUV’s parking brakes were defective. The woman is expected to recover although she suffered massive internal injuries.

Manufacturing defects are very common among most brands of vehicles. There are thousands of components in today’s vehicles; some of them are bound to have design defects. Some design defects are just not discovered before the vehicles are released for sale. History and industry internal documents show that a substantial number of defects are known by the manufacturers before the vehicles are sold and some defects are known before the vehicles are actually built. Some manufacturers will knowingly market defective vehicles figuring that getting caught will not be as big a loss as re-tooling or recalling.
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