Poorly designed roofs, unsafe door latches and an abnormally high rate of ejections in rollovers have plagued the Ford F-150. Ford Motor Co. has settled many lawsuits in regards to the strength of the roof of its F-Series SuperCab pickup.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, IIHS, gave the Ford F-150 its lowest rating in crash testing. In the IIHS crash tests, a barrier is set up to the left of the hood. This is called an offset test. An offset test is used to determine a vehicle's structural strength.
Brian O'Neil, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said "the F-150 exhibited major collapse of the occupant compartment in the offset test." This results in a collapse and the test dummy's movement was not well controlled. The test's results showed serious injury to the head and neck of the test dummy. The airbag also deployed late, which increased the amount of damage to the dummy.
"This is as bad as it gets in terms of crash performance," O'Neill commented. When asked what he (Mr. O'Neil) would do if he owned a Ford F-150 O'Neill replied, "I'd get rid of it, I wouldn't put my family in a vehicle like this."
A total of 134 people were fatally ejected from F-Series SuperCabs from 1998 to 2001, according to a Ford internal document introduced at a trial.
Although the Ford F-150 was designed for driving off-road, the truck is not prepared to do so. The lack of a roll bar, cage and proper roof support poses potential roof crush harm to passengers in the case of a rollover.
Even worse yet, the four-door F-150 does not have a B-pillar between the doors on each side of the truck. In a rollover, roof crush can then put extra pressure on the area between the A-pillars and C-Pillars, causing the door latches to malfunction. This could easily result in driver passenger ejection. In vehicle rollovers, passenger ejection is the #1 cause of death.
As part of its defense in a lawsuit, Ford Motor Co. hired an outside firm to do a 45 mph dolly rollover test on an F-150 SuperCab. The truck suffered severe damage to the roof. The test showed the doors flying open and dummies being partially ejected. The plaintiff's lawyers used Ford's own tests to convince a jury that the crushed roof helped cause the fatal ejection of the truck's passengers. The jury awarded their survivors $225 million.
Contact Miller Weisbrod
If you or a loved one has been injured in a rollover or roof collapse related accident, contact Miller Weisbrod, LLP, for a free case assessment.
