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December 14, 2005
PUBLIC CITIZEN WANTS VOLVO ROOF-TEST DOCS UNSEALED
A court order sealing documents showing Volvo roof-strength testing and designs that provide greater occupant protection than those of Ford, which now owns Volvo, has been challenged by Public Citizen.
Representing the advocacy group, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice filed the challenge with a Florida court where the documents exhibits were introduced as evidence in a public trial, Duncan v. Ford Motor Company, a Jacksonville Florida state court case. The exhibits remained publicly available in the clerk’s office for weeks after the trial, generating nationwide news coverage. Ford eventually asked the trial court to seal the exhibits, relying on a pretrial gag order. In May 2005, the trial court granted Ford’s motion, barring further public access.
The documents are believed to have an important bearing on NHTSA’s current rulemaking to modify FMVSS 216, its roof crush standard. (See related stories in this and earlier archived articles in "Current Developments".) According to Public Citizen, they show that throughout the late 1990s, Ford successively weakened the roof of its Ford Explorer and that the vehicle has an extremely low margin of safety in rollover crashes.
"Testing documents from Volvo, which became a Ford subsidiary in 2000, also demonstrate that a strong roof can protect occupants in a rollover, and that, in developing its SUV, the XC-90, Volvo used a much stronger dynamic test to examine roof strength and the interaction of safety systems in a rollover,” the group says in its statement concerning the court challenge. [http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=1244]
Posted by MVHAP at December 14, 2005 06:35 PM