May 10, 2005
The Ford Motor Co. is waging a fierce battle in Florida and Washington to keep documents that suggest roof strength is key to protecting people in rollover crashes secret.
On the Washington front, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a proposed update to the roof crush standard to the White House for review. Consumer activists are campaigning for stronger roof requirements and the results are likely to be final later this year.
In Florida, Ford has asked a court in to issue an order preventing the public from viewing crash reports from its Volvo subsidiary that showed engineers working to improve the roof structure and seat belts in the XC90 to make the SUV safer.
The documents were used in a Florida court by lawyers for Claire Duncan, killed in a rollover crash involving a Ford Explorer. Ford, which lost the case, said the Explorer's roof exceeded federal standards, and federal crash data show that the SUV is as safe as comparable vehicles.
Other documents used as evidence in the trial showed Ford engineers made the Explorer roof weaker during two vehicle redesigns in the 1990s.
Ford is appealing the $10.2 million jury verdict in the Duncan case.
The same documents used as evidence in the trial were placed in the public docket of the NHTSA on April 26. They were temporarily removed last week after Ford protested. Ford says the papers contain corporate trade secrets.
In an April 29 letter to NHTSA, Ford assistant general counsel Donald Lough wrote that widespread public access to the documents "would likely result in substantial competitive harm" by revealing how the company introduces new technologies.
Safety advocates argue that the Volvo engineering reports were especially damning, considering the longtime contention by Ford that roof strength is not an important factor in rollover crashes.
Automakers have argued for decades that occupants are killed or injured in rollover crashes because they fly out of their seats and "dive" into the roof as the vehicle turns over.
The Volvo test reports show that engineers in Sweden placed a high priority on roof strength, as well as improved safety belts, as Volvo developed its first SUV, the XC90.
In one test report, dated August 1999, a crash-test dummy received severe head blows as an Explorer roof caved in. A NHTSA spokesman said the agency took the documents down temporarily, and it is waiting for a full legal argument from Ford about why they should not be available to the public.
