Vehicle Safety News

The Detroit News, "Danger Under the Hood; A little girl dies; attention turns to a faulty Ford part; More than 500 fires reported in pickups, SUVs; probe centers on cruise-control switch"

4-year old Blake Washington died in her bed in a blaze on New Year's Day 2004, the victim of what baffled local investigators said was a fire of undetermined origin. Nobody suspected that clues may have existed in the smoldering remains of the family's 2001 Ford F-150 pickup until a federal investigation of Ford vehicle fires became public earlier this year. With millions of Ford pickups and SUVs now under scrutiny for dangerous fires, the Washington case may prove to be a tragic example of the consequences of a hidden automotive defect.

On Friday, the Washington family filed a wrongful death suit in a Georgia state court against Ford Motor Co., alleging that a defective cruise-control deactivation switch in the F-150 caused the fire that killed Blake. "We expect to prove that the physical evidence is consistent with the fire originating in the Ford," said Mark Chalos of the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein in Nashville, Tenn. For Blake Washington's parents, the lawsuit is all about getting to the truth behind the tragedy that changed their lives forever. "We lost a child and nothing's going to bring her back, no amount of money," said Tanika Washington. "I want somebody to give a damn that we lost our baby."