Prepare For A Pumped-Up NHTSA - Bridgstone Firestone Inc. and Ford Motor Co. product defects cause accidents - Brief Article

It was the classic double-lane-change maneuver, a staple of auto company engineering validations and magazine road tests. It quickly unfolded into a bloody disaster, right in front of us. Neither my wife, Sue, nor I will ever forget what we saw on the local freeway that sunny autumn afternoon two years ago. In light of the Ford/Firestone debacle, both of us will always wonder. Was it the vehicle, the tires, or a combination of both that made it happen?

We don't know whether the driver and passenger of the late-model Ford Explorer Sport survived the crash. Both the female driver and male passenger were ejected from the SIN when it flipped across three lanes of 75-mph commuter traffic. We'd been following perhaps 100 feet behind the Explorer in the center lane. The sight of two human beings flying out of a vehicle and smashing down into the pavement at high speed sickened us moments later, when Sue brought our car to a stop on the narrow median. Thanks to her alertness, and to an open slot in the left-lane traffic, we narrowly missed nailing the Ford -- and its occupants -- when they hit the tarmac. And thanks only to God, many other vehicles missed them, too.

What had happened to cause this misery? Sue and I saw everything. Some numbskull in a sedan decided to exit the freeway from the left lane. In doing so, he or she cut off the Explorer, which tried to avoid the car by making like a football running back evading a tackle. The Explorer's driver cranked the wheel hard-right, then immediately hard-left. The drastic steering inputs upset the SUV so violently its left wheels lifted off the ground. The truck rolled at least two full rotations, banging down in the right lane, a smoking wreck. In the middle of the highway, two people lay motionless.

Dazed, Sue and I shared our reactions during the remaining drive home. First was our rage that people were seriously injured, maybe killed, because they weren't wearing their seat belts. They chose not to buckle up and paid for it. Second, the ugly event underscored our mutual belief that short-wheelbase, high-center-of-gravity trucks like the Explorer Sport are not the vehicles we'd want under us in any evasive maneuver.

Neither of us, however, would've pegged the Ford's tires as a possible culprit. Maybe they were, given the hot pavement and speed of the vehicle. Maybe the Explorer was overloaded. Maybe the tires were under-inflated. Maybe not.

As Firestone searches for the root cause of its tread-separation nightmare -- a search that could take years -- Harvey Firestone's grand old brand is already dead, in my opinion. And the auto industry's left to ponder the following:

If tire-tread separation was happening on Escorts or Tauruses instead of SUVs, would this be as big an issue? Would there be over 100 deaths involved? Would it have immersed Ford as deeply as it is in the Congressional crosshairs? Or would it be just another tire recall?

Despite having the most advanced computer-aided tools and processes, this industry will never produce a perfect, or perfectly safe, vehicle. Software doesn't create oversights and mistakes; the human beings who create the software do. Superbaerodynamicists couldn't keep Mercedes' race cars from going airborne -- three times -- at Le Mans last year any more than a superb pit crew could keep the throttle in Bobby Labonte's NASCAR racer from sticking at Darlington last month.

Expect a pumped-up NHTSA be in your lives more than ever, says Exide CEO Bob Lutz and regulatory-issues expert James Cole. OEMS and suppliers will be forced to expand their safety engineering, testing and legal staffs. Outsourced design and engineering may be affected. What would happen, for example, if a corner module was causing vehicle crashes?

Was it the vehicle or the tires? It doesn't matter any more. Automotive safety, and the resources needed to make it, will never be the same.

Lindsay Brooke, Editor-in-Chief

COPYRIGHT 2000 Cahners Publishing Company
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group