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Worst Score On Rollovers To Explorer Sport Trac

Chicago Tribune - Rick Popely

08/10/04 - Sport-utility vehicles fared worse than passenger cars in the federal government's latest rollover ratings, with the Ford Explorer Sport Trac posting the lowest score of all models.

The Explorer Sport Trac, an SUV with an open cargo bed like a pickup truck, scored two stars out of five, the only model to earn that rating.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new rating Monday that lists a percentage chance that a vehicle will roll in a single-vehicle crash. The Sport Trac had the highest of 68 models tested, 35.8 percent, more than twice any car.

Of the 36 SUVs rated, 24 earned three stars and 11 earned four. Among passenger cars, the Mazda RX-8 earned five stars--the only vehicle to receive the highest rating--and 19 others received four stars.

In its rollover ratings, the safety agency says a 2-star vehicle has up to a 40 percent chance of rolling in a single-vehicle accident. A 5-star vehicle has less than a 10 percent chance. A 1-star vehicle has greater than a 40 percent chance.

The agency issued the 2-star rating for the Explorer Sport Trac in February, but the new rating system did not change its score.

Part of the score is based on a dynamic test that simulates accident avoidance. The Sport Trac lifted two wheels in the test, an aggressive maneuver conducted between 35 and 50 m.p.h.

Ford defended the Sport Trac as safe, saying the wheels did not leave the ground until the vehicle reached 49 m.p.h., near the end of the test.

"Real-world data show that it is a safe vehicle that performs similarly to other vehicles in the same class," Ford spokeswoman Kristin Kinley said. "Our feeling is that it demonstrated high rollover resistance."

Congress ordered NHTSA in 2000 to develop a rollover test in the wake of nearly 300 deaths caused by Firestone tire failures, mostly on Ford Explorer SUVs.

Regular Explorer models with enclosed cargo areas, which are built from a newer design than the Sport Trac, earned three stars in the latest ratings, with a 22.8 percent chance of rollover.

The 2005 versions of regular Explorer models will receive as standard equipment "rollover stability control," an electronic system that applies brakes and reduces power to prevent rollovers.

Rollover control will not be available on the 2005 Sport Trac.

The new rollover information issued Monday considers whether a vehicle tipped onto two wheels in the agency's dynamic rollover test.

Wheels lifted on 15 SUVs and pickups, but the Ford Escape SUV was the only one that received a lower rating because of it.

The 4-wheel-drive Escape earned three stars, and NHTSA engineer Mark Krawczyk said it would have earned four stars if all four wheels stayed on the pavement.

The Escape was rated at a 20.9 percent chance of rolling, just over the 20 percent threshold to earn four stars. Krawczyk said tipping onto two wheels adds 3 to 5 percent to a vehicle's rating.

"That's part of the reason we're assigning the percentages, because some vehicles are so close to the boundaries for the star ratings," Krawczyk said. "It's an extra level of detail that was not there before."

David Champion, automotive testing director for Consumer Reports magazine, lauded NHTSA for providing more information to consumers but criticized the agency for not giving stiffer penalties to vehicles that tip up on two wheels.

The Ford F-150 and Toyota Tacoma pickups both earned four stars and a 19.8 percent rollover chance, even though the Tacoma tipped up on two wheels in NHTSA's fishhook test.

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