I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

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ex-khobar Andy
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I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

From CNN:
New York (CNN Business)The family of an elderly couple killed when the roof of their F-250 pickup collapsed during a rollover accident in 2014 has been awarded a massive $1.7 billion in punitive damages from Ford.

The jury appeared to endorse the plaintiff's arguments that Ford knew of the problem years before the fatal crash, acted slowly to correct it and that other deaths have resulted from the same design flaw.

Evidence presented in the case showed that the F-250 pickups made in the 17 model years prior to 2017 all pose a risk to drivers and passengers in cases of a rollover, said Jim Butler Jr., the attorney who won the verdict. He said 5.2 million trucks have been built with the same faulty roof.
Perhaps even more troubling is that the best-selling F-150 pickups made before Model Year 2009 have a very similar roof design, Butler said. The F-150 has been the best selling US vehicle of any type for more than 40 years.
Without knowing any more than is in the report, I am willing to believe that Ford, by spending an extra $XXX per vehicle, could have improved the strength of the roof of its F-250. Every vehicle on the planet could be safer if the manufacturer had spent $YYY more on seat belts or tires or strengthening panels or air bags or blind spot warnings or whatever. I don't think this is a Iacocca/Pinto-type problem and frankly, is it possible to build a vehicle roof which will hold up to every roll-over? If we want to live in a society in which reasonably priced reasonably safe vehicles are available to people, then we have to accept that accidents and occasional inadequacies are hard-wired into the system.

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Scooter
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Scooter »

I can see why the jury did not see this as a reasonable tradeoff between safety and affordability. It's not just that Ford was aware of the issue for years, but that they had already engineered an improved design and chose to sit on it, until pushed into making the changes by buyers concerned about the safety record of the existing design. And I don't think that delaying the changes to the F-250 for 8 years after making them to the F-150 helped their case.
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Crackpot
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Crackpot »

I always find these things a little troubling design solutions are rarely “one size fits all” and the problem is there are always better solutions but if you kept implementing them you would never actually produce anything let alone an affordable product. That being said there is a healthy amount of stupidity in the business and it should be held to account for them.

In this case I would be interested in hearing the difference in rollover potential between the f250 and the F150 (they will be different) as well as the design refresh schedule for the F250.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Jarlaxle »

The F-250 and F-150 are, after 1996, very different trucks. I don't think any of the cab metal is the same. (Beds and tailgates are, but those aren't structural.) Mechanically, they actually share very little, with completely different frames, suspension designs, axles, and even engines in many cases.

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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by MGMcAnick »

From the article:
If punitive damages are upheld by higher courts, the Hill family and their attorneys will only get 25% of the award amount. Under Georgia law, the state gets 75% of the awards granted by the courts. The only way the plaintiffs would get the full amount of punitive damages is if there is a settlement reached between the two sides, Butler said.

That's pretty healthy rate of taxation, don't you think?
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Scooter
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Scooter »

I could see it as a way that the state can impose a "fine" on the offender by way of the action brought by the plaintiff. The plaintiff gets their compensatory damages, plus a sort of "finder's fee" of 25% of the punitive damages for bringing the action.

I have no argument with the concept of punitive damages, but it does seem odd that they should all accrue to one or a few plaintiffs, when there has been actual and potential harm visited on a much larger group. Perhaps this is a way of seeing to it that plaintiffs are justly, but not excessively, compensated for their damages, while still penalizing offenders for the full scope of their tortious conduct.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by BoSoxGal »

Punitive damages are intended to punish the defendant sufficient to motivate changed behavior. Since FORD is a 60 billion dollar company, a billion plus seems sufficient to meet the objective. The changed behavior is meant to prevent further incidents like the incident under litigation.

I’m actually a fan of this Georgia law that gives 75% of punitive damages to the state - that is, the people. I would like to know more about how those funds are used by the state, but I do think this is an approach that very much undermines the arguments for ‘tort reform’ that denigrate personal injury law by calling it a litigation lottery for plaintiffs. If the large punitive damages award goes to Georgia schools it is a better public policy than to massively enrich one family for a failure of safety that will likely affect many people before all those faulty F250s are retired to the junkyard.

The middle aged children of the deceased parents in this case are realizing a $24 million award for compensatory damages. Even if they only get 60%, or even 40%, that is a robust award for the loss of elderly parents upon whom the children were no longer financially dependent. The plaintiffs in any case stated their own desire that the litigation bring about changed behavior and awareness of the risk of these vehicles more than a financial award for them.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by BoSoxGal »

On another note - my father was a huge fan of the F150 and owned the model repeatedly for most of my childhood. It is unnerving to know what a poorly made vehicle it is in this regard. I Googled pickup truck rollover images and saw several trucks that were crushed like that - I couldn’t identify in each image the model of the truck, but I did see several images of Dodges and Toyotas that remained intact on rollover presumably because an adequate roll bar is part of the cab design?

Anyway it’s unsettling to know how many of those FORD pickups are on the road. Yikes!
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Bicycle Bill
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Bicycle Bill »

A rule of thumb — anything can be made safer, but nothing can be made completely safe.  Or if it could, it would be prohibitively expensive.  Then, of course, there are Murphy's Ninth and Eleventh laws:
  • Murphy's Ninth Law: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
  • Murphy's Eleventh Law: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
People who purchase and use something must be willing to accept a certain amount of reasonable risk for the benefit of using the item, whether it's airline tickets, clothing, cosmetics, hand tools, home repair supplies (the gal who used Gorilla Glue as a hair-styling product comes to mind), or — as in this case — pick-up trucks.
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Joe Guy
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Joe Guy »

There's a simple fix. Keep your pickup truck right-side up and always wear your seat belt.

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Scooter
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Scooter »

Keeping your truck right side up is beyond your control if it is slammed hard enough by another vehicle. And a seat belt is useless if, once overturned, the collapsed roof jams your head into your abdominal cavity.
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Crackpot
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Crackpot »

Anything will collapse if it has enough force applied to it same with tipping over the questions are how much force? under what conditions? And how likely is a failure mode going to happen?

Some chilling food for thought:
velocity is a mass multiplier.
Most cars are considered 5 star for meeting exceeding requirements at 35mph (55kph)
Any collisions that happen above that speed (most accidents have some warning and therefore have some speed reduction) are going to be terrible.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Big RR »

True--and I do not think it is that hard to design a motor vehicle having a roof which will not collapse during the sort of rollovers that the injured drivers had experienced. The question becomes whether the automaker wants to invest the money to do it; it's always cheaper to do nothing. That is what the tort system tends to balance--placing significant liability (and punishment) on the manufacturer to be certain it doesn't just stand by and do nothing, by making doing nothing quite expensive. So we have nonflammable pajamas that will not burst into flame if near a candle, ladders that will not collapse if an average persons climbs them... It would be better if they did what is needed without this "prompting", but, at least in the captalist system where maximization of profit is a virtue, they do not.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by BoSoxGal »

Crackpot wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 11:52 am
Anything will collapse if it has enough force applied to it same with tipping over the questions are how much force? under what conditions? And how likely is a failure mode going to happen?

Some chilling food for thought:
velocity is a mass multiplier.
Most cars are considered 5 star for meeting exceeding requirements at 35mph (55kph)
Any collisions that happen above that speed (most accidents have some warning and therefore have some speed reduction) are going to be terrible.
How is it that they can make formula one racing cars that drivers walk away from high speed wrecks with barely a scratch on them? How much do those cars cost to build, and what are the essential differences in materials utilized?
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Crackpot
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Crackpot »

Those cars have near continuous inspection and maintenance on them and cost about $500k to start. They also depend for nothings like 5point harnesses and helmets that everyday drivers aren’t going to accept they also only have to concern themselves with a single occupant. Not to mention that the conditions they operate under though extreme are
Also far more limited than your daily driver.

Let’s also not forget that those vehicles save the driver by destroying themselves spectacularly and creating a large field of debris is not something that is desirable in a mon-track situation as it could injure and kill far more people.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by BoSoxGal »

Okay that makes sense. But haven’t some of the design improvements in performance cars carried over to regular automobiles in limited fashion? I mean I think of the ad campaign we had in Montana ‘room to live’ which promotes seat belt use (sadly not common enough in Montana) and showing how passengers autos crumple all around the passenger cabin but leave the cabin largely intact with room to live, IF the passengers are buckled up and don’t get ejected or bounced around inside.

I’m thinking of Tiger Woods whose vehicle crashed and rolled at fairly high speed and he was okay other than very bad leg/foot fractures which whether they had led to amputation or full recovery as in his case, the vehicle still preserved life. I can’t recall the model of that vehicle but I think it was high end SUV? Some cars are better built than others obviously.
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Burning Petard »

That Georgia law is interesting. Looks to me like real incentive to set the damages outrageously high. Who you gonna complain too? The appeals judge gets a piece of the action. If it is really 'punitive' damages, not intended to make the injured party whole, why shouldn't the state get ALL of it?

snailgate

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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by BoSoxGal »

Burning Petard wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 5:30 pm
That Georgia law is interesting. Looks to me like real incentive to set the damages outrageously high. Who you gonna complain too? The appeals judge gets a piece of the action. If it is really 'punitive' damages, not intended to make the injured party whole, why shouldn't the state get ALL of it?

snailgate
Because the slice of punitive award that goes to plaintiffs attorneys is the incentive for plaintiffs attorneys to bring cases like these - which cost a small fortune to prepare and litigate - on behalf of regular Joe victims of product liability who haven’t got the money to pay attorneys fees up front, win or lose.
Last edited by BoSoxGal on Wed Aug 24, 2022 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Crackpot »

RR

Regarding the design It’s hard to say I have been in the business long enough to know it could well be poor design, but at the same time it’s hard to determine the exact failure conditions we are talking about. Due to the nature of the beast roof to A-pillar joins are tricky as there are big holes for glass which aren’t structural. You also have to keep the joint as narrow as possible so the driver has as little of thier visual field obstructed. Then with a half ton vehicle you add a much greater mass that joint has to handle in the event of roll over plus the possibility of dealing with an even greater mass due to a well strapped in load. The nature of the area is structurally weak and in general it is hard to get greater than enough structure for static rollover especially as gross vehicle weight goes up. Most vehicles combat these issues by making the vehicle less likely to roll over. It’s not a mistake that F1 vehicles don’t have roofs and instead protect
The drivers head by building up the area around the drivers head (outside the helmet) to protect the driver during rollover.

As I said there isn’t enough info given in this article to determine if this judgement is justified but I do know enough that such a determination is not simple.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: I'm no Ford apologist but this is just ridiculous

Post by Bicycle Bill »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 3:57 pm
Crackpot wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 11:52 am
Anything will collapse if it has enough force applied to it same with tipping over the questions are how much force? under what conditions? And how likely is a failure mode going to happen?

Some chilling food for thought:
velocity is a mass multiplier.
Most cars are considered 5 star for meeting exceeding requirements at 35mph (55kph)
Any collisions that happen above that speed (most accidents have some warning and therefore have some speed reduction) are going to be terrible.
How is it that they can make formula one racing cars that drivers walk away from high speed wrecks with barely a scratch on them? How much do those cars cost to build, and what are the essential differences in materials utilized?
This will answer at least one of those questions.
In 2021, Motor Sport Magazine came together with F1 Chief Technical Director Pat Symonds to figure out how much a modern F1 car costs and came up with some eye-opening numbers.

Engine: $18.32 million
Chasis: $707,000
Gearbox: $354,000
Hydraulics: $170,000
Rear wing: $85,000-$150,000
Front wing/nose cone: $141,500
Floor and bargeboards: $141,000
Brake discs and pads: $78,000
Small components: $51,000
Steering wheel: $50,000
Fuel tank: $31,000
Halo: $17,000
Tires: $3,000 per set
TOTAL: $20.62 million

Those costs are simply for the parts themselves, not the development or manpower involved in making the car a reality.
And remember, that's for a single-seat vehicle with little or no creature comforts, and absolutely no capacity for transporting anything but its driver — who is himself relatively young, in tip-top physical condition with razor-sharp focus and reactions, and swaddled in protective gear like flame-proof clothing, safety harnesses and padding unlike anything seen outside of a rocket sled, and a full-face helmet.  Compare that to the distracted, overweight, average American adult and the oversized, overblown pickup trucks and SUVs that seems to be the new standard for personal vehicles on the American road.  
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