Teen driver falls asleep, dies, gets $61M

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14014165

17 year old driver FALLS ASLEEP at the wheel, and his Exploder
ends up flipping, killing him. Any normal parent would bemoan
their son's carelessness and driving while tired. But no, this lot
gets $61 million from the car manufacturer. I wonder if the parents
are now contemplating clever ways to off their other children and
double their money.

I hope (for the sake of US residents who'll end up paying the price)
that this loses on appeal. God forbid that all cars will now have
to be designed to not kill their driver if the driver falls asleep.

Was it a jury decision?

Old Wolf wrote:
> http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14014165
>
> 17 year old driver FALLS ASLEEP at the wheel, and his Exploder
> ends up flipping, killing him. Any normal parent would bemoan
> their son's carelessness and driving while tired. But no, this lot
> gets $61 million from the car manufacturer. I wonder if the parents
> are now contemplating clever ways to off their other children and
> double their money.
>
> I hope (for the sake of US residents who'll end up paying the price)
> that this loses on appeal. God forbid that all cars will now have
> to be designed to not kill their driver if the driver falls asleep.

Miami: A jury in Miami has ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay 61 million
dollars to the family of a teenager who died in a Ford Explorer that
rolled over, a lawyer in the case said.

Attorney Bruce Kaster said the decision was reached this week after a
Ford engineer testified in a deposition that he had recommended in 1989
that the Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle be lowered and widened to
increase stability, but that the changes were not made until 2001.

Jurors ordered Ford to pay 61 million dollars in compensatory damages
to the family of Lance Hall, who died on a Florida highly in 1997 when
the Explorer in which he was traveling rolled over several times. The
jurors were told that the driver had briefly nodded off and lost
control of the vehicle when he woke up. Both Hall and the driver were
17 years old at the time.

"If the vehicle didn't have a defect in its handling, in its steering,
they would have been able to steer the Explorer back in the road," said
Kaster, an expert in SUV rollovers who represented Hall's family.

"Ford did not want to delay the introduction of the Explorer.
Accordingly, Ford produced a vehicle they knew was unstable in order to
maximize their profits," he said.

Ford replaced some 30 million tires in 2000 and 2001 after federal
regulators documented tread separation was involved in hundreds of
Explorer accidents.

The three-billion-dollar replacement program was prompted in part by an
official investigation that linked 271 fatalities and 800 accidents to
events in which Explorers tipped over after parts of their Firestone
tires peeled off at high speeds.

Bridgestone Firestone last month agreed to pay 240 million dollars to
Ford Motor Co. to settle liability over the recall of defective tires
linked to the deaths.

--------

Sounds to me more like Ford ****ed up big time by rushing a dangerous
product to market, and this just follows in the path of the previous
Explorer rollover suits. Even if the driver makes a mistake, the
vehicle shouldn't be so poorly designed to nearly guarantee a
spectacular rollover.

Dave

On 17 Nov 2005 20:14:23 -0800, "Dave" > was
understood to have stated the following:

>
>Sounds to me more like Ford ****ed up big time by rushing a dangerous
>product to market, and this just follows in the path of the previous
>Explorer rollover suits. Even if the driver makes a mistake, the
>vehicle shouldn't be so poorly designed to nearly guarantee a
>spectacular rollover.

By the same token it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that a
vehicle with a large height to weight ratio has a very high likelihood
of rolling over. Too bad it was the passenger, and not the driver, who
received the darwin award. Even with the Explorer redesign, stability
isn't going to be good enough for the a lot of teen males drive.


--

"Laura Bush Murdered Her Boyfriend" brags of it's homosexuallity:

the guys at the bath-house stopped laughing at my 3 inch weenie.
: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...1dd649fb?hl=en

Joshua Calvert > demonstrates his lack of understanding of the terms "sarcasm", "irony", and "hypocrisy":
Poor rightard, forced to whine about an 40 year old event.
Message-ID: >

In article .com>, Dave wrote:

> Sounds to me more like Ford ****ed up big time by rushing a dangerous
> product to market, and this just follows in the path of the previous
> Explorer rollover suits. Even if the driver makes a mistake, the
> vehicle shouldn't be so poorly designed to nearly guarantee a
> spectacular rollover.

It's not a dangerous vehicle. It's friggin' truck! It handles like a
truck. Poorly with a tendency to flip over with sudden movements of the
steering input. Those are drawbacks of having truck abilities such as
going off road, towing, cargo capacity, etc.

Morons using trucks as passenger cars and expecting them not to be trucks
is the problem.

The driver falls asleep and somehow the result of that situation is the
manufacturers fault. The human race has completely gone nuts!

Brent P wrote:
> In article .com>, Dave wrote:
>
> > Sounds to me more like Ford ****ed up big time by rushing a dangerous
> > product to market, and this just follows in the path of the previous
> > Explorer rollover suits. Even if the driver makes a mistake, the
> > vehicle shouldn't be so poorly designed to nearly guarantee a
> > spectacular rollover.
>
> It's not a dangerous vehicle. It's friggin' truck! It handles like a
> truck. Poorly with a tendency to flip over with sudden movements of the
> steering input. Those are drawbacks of having truck abilities such as
> going off road, towing, cargo capacity, etc.
>
> Morons using trucks as passenger cars and expecting them not to be trucks
> is the problem.

They are marketed as passenger cars. It would be unreasonable to
expect consumers not to use a product for its marketed purpose.

Brent P wrote:
> In article .com>, Dave wrote:
>
> > Sounds to me more like Ford ****ed up big time by rushing a dangerous
> > product to market, and this just follows in the path of the previous
> > Explorer rollover suits. Even if the driver makes a mistake, the
> > vehicle shouldn't be so poorly designed to nearly guarantee a
> > spectacular rollover.
>
> It's not a dangerous vehicle. It's friggin' truck! It handles like a
> truck. Poorly with a tendency to flip over with sudden movements of the
> steering input. Those are drawbacks of having truck abilities such as
> going off road, towing, cargo capacity, etc.
>
> Morons using trucks as passenger cars and expecting them not to be trucks
> is the problem.

The problem is that these particular trucks behaved much worse than
most trucks even. They made a truck much, much more topheavy, while
ignoring their own engineers warnings that it was a really bad idea
because it would have cost slightly more to build them properly.

The design flaws also included a weaker-than-suggested roof, that
caused these trucks to cave in much easier than they should have, in
many cases making injuries much worse than if the cab had stayed in
shape, as it would in most vehicles in similar crashes.

>From what I've read about several of these lawsuits it was that the
Explorer specifically was designed in ways that were much more
dangerous than other comparable vehicles.

I'm not a fan of SUVs, but I also don't like them designed so the
driver is more likely to die than they need to be.

Dave

"Dave" > wrote in message
..

>
> I'm not a fan of SUVs, but I also don't like them designed so the
> driver is more likely to die than they need to be.
>

Sounds like a self-correcting problem to me!

Bernard

Bernard Farquart wrote:
> "Dave" > wrote in message
> .
>
> >
> > I'm not a fan of SUVs, but I also don't like them designed so the
> > driver is more likely to die than they need to be.
> >
>
> Sounds like a self-correcting problem to me!

Yes, the self-correcting mechanism goes like this.

Car company makes unsafe product
Consumer buys unsafe product.
Consumer uses unsafe product.
Consumer dies.
Consumer's family sues car company.
Car company loses money.
Car company stops making unsafe product.

>
> Bernard