2009 Vehicle Safety Press Articles

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November 25, 2009

San Francisco Chronicle, "Toyota replacing some 4M gas pedals that could jam"

Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it will replace accelerator pedals on about 4 million recalled vehicles in the United States because the pedals can get stuck in the floor mats, another blow to the reputation of the world's largest automaker. More...

November 8, 2009

Los Angeles Times, "Runaway Toyota Cases Ignored"

More than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported since 2001 that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own, in many cases slamming into trees, parked cars and brick walls, among other obstacles, a Times review of federal records has found. More...

October 25, 2009

Los Angeles Times, "New details in crash that prompted Toyota recall"

Federal highway safety inspectors have released new details of a fatal car crash that triggered Toyota Motor Corp.'s largest recall, including a finding that the Lexus ES 350 sedan involved had a gas pedal design that could increase the risk of its being obstructed by a floor mat. More...

October 23, 2009

Lawyers USA, "Despite recall, Ford faces wrongful death, injury suits"

Earlier this month Ford Motor Co. expanded its largest recall ever, adding 4.5 million vehicles equipped with faulty cruise control switches. Mark Chalos, a partner at Lieff Cabraser in Nashville, said his firm has been involved in about a dozen lawsuits alleging property damage and personal injury, as well as three deaths due to fires allegedly caused by faulty Ford speed control switches. More...

October 13, 2009

Detroit News, "Ford recalls 4.5 million vehicles for faulty switch"

Ford Motor Co. announced an expansion to its largest-ever automotive recall by adding about 4.5 million vehicles to the recall over a faulty switch linked to hundreds of vehicle fires. The action, which comes in the face of an 18-month federal investigation, means the company has now called back more than 14 million vehicles in eight separate recalls over a 10-year period because of the problem. More...

October 6, 2009

Law360, "Group Urges NHTSA To Recall Jeeps Over Fire Hazard"

A consumer group has lodged a petition urging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall a decade's worth of Jeep Grand Cherokees, saying versions of the vehicle that have the fuel tank located behind the rear axle pose a serious danger to drivers. In a letter dated Friday, the Center for Auto Safety asked the NHTSA to initiate a defect investigation and recall all of Chrysler's 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees with fuel tanks behind the rear axle. More...

October 5, 2009

San Jose Mercury News, "Toyota recall and apology come too late for Redwood City man and San Jose family"

After Guadalupe Gomez's 2007 Toyota Camry careened out of control, mysteriously accelerating to more than 100 mph on a San Jose highway, no one quite believed his story that the engine simply surged on its own when it smashed into a Honda Accord, killing its driver in a burst of flames. Now, they do. More...

September 23, 2009

San Jose Mercury News, "Santa Clara County jury awards $49 million to Pacheco Pass accident victim"

A Santa Clara County jury this week awarded a former college student more than $49 million in damages, finding that two truckers and state transportation officials were to blame for a 2007 accident on Highway 152 that left him permanently brain damaged. More...

September 7, 2009

The Grand Rapids Press, "Victims in deadly semi-truck, SUV crash on Int. 196 identified"

Police have identified the victims of this morning's fiery double-fatal crash on westbound I-196 as Edna Gorter, 83, of Grand Rapids and Robert Osborne, 70, of Mancelona. Osborne was driving a semi-truck carrying pies when his vehicle collided with a 2007 Chevy Tahoe driven by 82-year-old Robert Gorter, husband of Edna Gorter. More...

September 1, 2009

Los Angeles Times, "Toyota concealed evidence in rollover cases, ex-attorney alleges"

Toyota spent years concealing evidence from victims of hundreds of rollover accidents that resulted in death and injury, a former top lawyer for the automaker says. The accusation, spelled out in a lawsuit filed in federal court, has the potential to reopen cases that Toyota Motor Corp. won or settled for two decades, legal experts said. More...

August 25, 2009

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Distracted Trailer Truck Driver Accident Leads to $18 Million Award"

A man severely injured in a pileup that killed three people on Highway 40 (Interstate 64) last year is entitled to more than $13.8 million from a truck driver and his company, a federal magistrate judge has ruled. The man's wife has been awarded $4.2 million more. The crash left Mark Tiburzi, 53, under constant care in a nursing home, unable to walk or talk, according to his lawyer and court filings. More...

August 24, 2009

The Mountain Enterprise, "Big Rig Crash: Lost Brakes Cause Fatal Accident"

California Highway Patrol Officer Patrick Etchebarne reported details of the fatal runaway truck accident that took the life of Sumiko Imamura, 67 on Sunday, Aug. 23 at 4 p.m. More...

May 28, 2009

San Francisco Chronicle, "Paralyzed Oakland musician sues Ford, wins"

A federal court jury awarded $18.3 million in damages Wednesday to a Bay Area musician who suffered a fractured spine and was paralyzed when his band's rented Ford van rolled over on an icy highway in 2005, dislodging his seat and pinning him against the roof. More...

May 28, 2009

LA Times, "Land Rover maker ordered to pay $21.1 million in rollover case"

A Los Angeles judge has ordered automaker Jaguar Land Rover to pay $21.1 million to a Simi Valley man who was paralyzed in 2003 when his Land Rover Discovery sport utility vehicle rolled over several times after a collision on the 118 Freeway. More...

May 26, 2009

Portfolio Media, "Punitive Damages Awarded Against Chrysler For Alleged Cover Up Of Deadly Seat Design Defect"

The U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed DaimlerChrysler Corp.’s request to review a Tennessee Supreme Court decision upholding an award of $13 million in punitive damages to the parents of an 8-month-old boy who died in a 2001 car crash. In June 2001, Rachel Sparkman, Jeremy Flax, Joshua and another passenger were rear-ended by a speeding pickup truck. The back of the front passenger seat collapsed, and the back of that passenger's head collided with the baby's forehead, fracturing the child's skull and causing severe brain damage. He died the next day. More...

May 20, 2009

ABC News, "Chrysler Bankruptcy: Consumer Groups Object, Say 10 Million Vehicle Owners Will Be Left in the Lurch"

Chrysler car owners will be left in the lurch after the automaker's bankruptcy, consumer groups are charging. On Tuesday evening, a host of consumer groups, along with liability attorneys, filed an objection in bankruptcy court to the Chrysler deal. They say the way the deal is structured, the "new" Chrysler would be absolved of liability for any Chrysler car sold prior to the bankruptcy. So if you own a Chrysler vehicle and have an accident that you believe was caused by a manufacturing defect, you would be out of luck. You could not sue Chrysler for damages, they say. More...

May 13, 2009

Knoxville News Sentinel, "Dad raises awareness about 15-passenger vans after daughter's death"

Patrick James was hours away from burying his 10-year-old daughter when he started to learn some disturbing things about her death. Lexie James was killed in July when the van she was riding in spun out of control and flipped over four times on Interstate 26 in South Carolina. Though she was wearing a seat belt, Lexie was somehow thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene. What James didn't know, but would soon discover, was that tests have raised a number of safety questions about 15-passenger vans like the one in which Lexie was riding. The federal government, in fact, has issued four safety warnings about such vehicles since 2001. More...

April 30, 2009

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "$40M awarded to Georgia woman over faulty Ford"

A Lamar County woman who said a transmission defect in her Ford Explorer led to her paralysis was awarded $40 million in damages by a DeKalb County jury late Wednesday. The jury's award to Jessica Mundy includes $30 million in punitive damages, $9 million in compensatory damages to her and $1 million to her husband. Ford Motor Co. and Legacy Ford in McDonough, where Mundy purchased the 2004 Explorer that ran her over, were defendants in the suit. More...

February 18, 2009

Southeast Texas Record, "Galveston suit blames Rhino ATV for boy's injuries from rollover"

A Santa Fe couple is seeking $3 million in damages from Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. after their son was injured in a Rhino ATV rollover more than a year ago. Warren and Terry Aldous filed a lawsuit on behalf of Brandon Aldous against Yamaha and numerous other businesses. Court papers say Brandon Aldous was riding a doorless Yamaha Rhino ATV near his parents' residence on June 2, 2007, when the vehicle rolled over as the boy made a turn. Brandon was pinned underneath the ATV, but his mother and a neighbor were able to pull him out. The boy was then taken to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston where physicians determined he suffered severe injuries to his left leg. More...

January 27, 2009

MSNBC, "Nearly 100 kids died in '07 car backovers; 99 deaths and 2,000 injuries involved those under 14, officials say"

Nearly 100 children were killed and 2,000 injured in 2007 when they were backed over by cars, typically in residential driveways, the government said Tuesday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released the data in a study evaluating backover deaths and other difficult-to-quantify "non-traffic" deaths and injuries. More....