Personal Injury and Product Liability: Roof crush hearing June 4

Roof crush hearing June 4

June 3rd, 2008 by Wendi Lewis

A Senate hearing on roof crush strength and related driver and passenger safety in vehicle rollover accidents is set for Wednesday, June 4, from 10-11:30 a.m. ET in room 253, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. Sen. Mark Pryor, chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Automotive Safety, called for the hearing after meeting with representatives from non-profit citizen action group People Safe In Rollovers Foundation.

The group was founded by Paula Lawlor, a crusader for safer made cars. The organization is working hand-in-hand on this project with Kevin Moody, whose son Tyler was killed in a vehicle rollover accident in 2003 as a result of roof crush.

In 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed an upgrade to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 216 (FMVSS 216), which for the first time would regulate the roof strength of many SUVs and pickup trucks by extending coverage to vehicles with gross weight ratings up to 10,000 pounds. The current standard applies only to vehicles with ratings up to 6,000 pounds, which means about 44 percent of the SUV and pickup fleets currently are exempt.

The proposal would require that a roof withstand an applied force equal to 2.5 times the vehicle’s weight while maintaining sufficient headroom for an average size adult male. The current requirement is that the roof withstands an applied force equal to 1.5 times the vehicle’s weight, with a limit of 5,000 pounds for cars.

The NHTSA proposal would improve the rollover crashworthiness of the fleet, but stronger requirements would save even more lives. NHTSA estimated that 13 to 44 lives per year would be saved by the 2005 proposal that roofs withstand 2.5 times the vehicle’s weight.

People Safe in Rollovers Foundation is opposed to the NHTSA proposed standard because they say it is not strong enough. They believe it will not protect from the crushing of the roof into the occupant’s survival space in the event of a rollover accident, yet would protect automobile manufacturers from liability in the event of a roof crush injury or death, if the car were manufactured according to this standard. Their proposal calls for a standard that roofs withstand 3.5 times the vehicle’s weight.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a nonprofit research and communications organization funded by auto insurers, noted a “surprising lack of evidence” that the quasi-static test procedure used by the NHTSA in the standard had any relationship to protection in real-world rollover crashes. They determined that without knowledge of such a relationship, it is not possible to determine an adequate level of roof strength for the vehicle fleet.

Based on the need for real-world crash data, the Institute studied the relationship between roof strength measurements using the FMVSS 216 procedure and the risk of injury or death in rollover crashes. Results of the 2008 Institute study found that strong roofs significantly reduce the risk of injury or death in rollover crashes, and they continue to do so beyond the roof strength level proposed by NHTSA. This was the first study to demonstrate the link between roof strength and injury risk.

The Institute’s study found that occupants in vehicles that meet the current strength requirements by a narrow margin have elevated injury risks compared to occupants in vehicles with stronger roofs. It estimates that a standard requiring roof strength to increase to a level of 3 or 3.5 times the vehicle’s weight would be expected to save hundreds of lives per year.

NHTSA’s deadline for announcing the final rule for FMVSS 216 is July 1. It is the goal of People Safe in Rollovers Foundation to convince Congress to enact a tougher law with higher standards for roof strength prior to the NHTSA establishment of its proposed standard.

Visit the People Safe in Rollovers Foundation web site for more details, and Roof Crush Petition for their full Congressional proposal. The Senate meeting tomorrow is open to the public and the media.

Tags: FMVSS 216, IIHS, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Kevin Moody, Mark Pryor, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, Paula Lawlor, People Safe In Rollovers Foundation, rollover, roof crush, Roof Crush Petition, roof strength, safety, Sen. Mark Pryor, Subcommitee on Automotive Safety, U.S. Senate, vehicle safety

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Legal, News, rollover accident. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.