Vehicle Safety News

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Singer's mom sues SUV maker"

The mother of the late hip-hop music star Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes is suing an automaker alleging it ignored warnings that its SUV was prone to roll over. Lopes, a rapper in the Grammy Award-winning Atlanta trio TLC, died in a one-car crash in 2002 while driving a red 2001 Mitsubishi Montero she rented while vacationing in Honduras.

The lawsuit against the Japanese company and its North America subsidiary claims Lopes was driving at a normal speed when she swerved to miss a car stopped in front of her, causing her SUV to flip. Savannah attorney Jeff Harris, who is representing the singer's mother, Wanda Lopes-Colemon, plans to use a study on vehicle rollovers to bolster his argument that Mitsubishi should have warned consumers about the potentially fatal design flaw. Consumer Reports gave the 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Limited a "not acceptable" safety rating after testing the model and six other SUVs using sharp turns to simulate what it calls real-world emergencies. Only the Mitsubishi appeared prone to rollovers, the study claims.