Saturday’s 15-passenger van crash that killed six and injured eight members of a Bronx church is a somber reminder that the vehicle remains the only one in the U.S. fleet today that is deadly if used as a 15-passenger van. NHTSA long-ago whiffed on recalling the unstable vehicles, instead relying on manufacturers’ good intentions and consumer warnings, and the preventable carnage continues.

The 1997 Ford Econoline van, loaded with 14 members of the Joy Fellowship Christian Assemblies and their luggage, was on its way to a church event in Schenectady, NY when the left rear tire failed on the New York Thruway. The van rolled over, scattering occupants and suitcases on the median.

The tragedy drew a swift and strong reaction from safety advocates, who have been lobbying NHTSA to impose requirements on 15-passenger vans that would make them more stable. But the agency has stuck close to the path of least resistance, issuing consumer advisories instead of compelling manufacturers to offer more substantive remedies.

“This is a vehicle that by all measures – including NHTSA’s – that has been found as unsafe for its intended purpose and still remains on the road. This is the classic example of having a defect that is too big to recall” said Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies.

The Tire Did it!

Caught in a public relations squall, Ford turned to its favorite scapegoat: the tire. (Hey, it worked for the Explorer.) A spokesman blamed a badly maintained tire, and said the vehicle was safe when the vans are “properly maintained, driven safely by experienced drivers and when occupants wear their safety belts”  Ford further defended itself by pointing out that it gives its customers “tips” on how to avoid rollovers in the owner’s manual and has placed a warning on the driver-side visor and the rollover risk. Tips! Labels! Awesome! Well, as one former president declared: “Mission Accomplished!”

Statistician Randy Whitfield of Quality Control Systems Corporation, who has been studying the government fatality data involving 15-passenger vans, says that about 15 percent of the fatal rollovers are reportedly linked to a tire failure.

Whitfield’s latest update on 15-passenger van fatalities shows that from “1982 through 2008, there have been 724 fatal rollovers of 15-passenger vans in which an occupant of the van was killed in the United States. These crashes killed 1,153 persons and incapacitatingly injured an additional 1,957. More than six thousand persons have been involved in fatal rollovers as drivers or passengers in the vans, of whom only 305 were known to be uninjured in these crashes.”

Whitfield obtained these figures using data from the 1982-2008 Fatality Analysis Reporting System database and “involved model year 1981-2008 vans manufactured by Ford, Dodge / DaimlerChrysler, and General Motors / Chevrolet.”

With the regularity of swallows returning to Capistrano, NHTSA has been issuing Consumer Advisories warning the public about the dangers of 15-passenger vans every May from 2001 to 2009. This spring, the agency, deluged with announcing Toyota misdeeds and cheerleading distracted driving countermeasures, skipped it.

Its last official press release in 2009 touted a steady decline in the number of deaths in 15-passenger van crashes since they began issuing warnings, but Whitfield says that the decline has not been consistent: “Annual fatalities in 2007 and 2008 were about half of the totals in the peak years of 2000 and 2001. However, the number of persons killed actually increased in 2004, 2007, and 2008 compared with the previous years. 39% of all of the 15-passenger van rollover fatalities since 1982 (454 of 1,153) occurred after the first Consumer Advisory was issued by NHTSA in 2001.”

“Despite these many advisories, the vans have continued to roll over in fatal crashes,” Whitfield says.

In 2005, NHTSA hung its own “Mission Accomplished” banner. Using a smaller subset of the same data, it announced: “the public is responding to safety information about 15-passenger vans. Fatalities from 15-passenger van rollover crashes have declined 35 percent since advisories began in 2001.” If that’s true, the agency has yet to publish any study linking changes in consumer behavior to the 15-passenger van rollover rate.

Its latest Research Note, Fatalities to Occupants of 15-Passenger Vans, 2003-2007, published in May 2009, the agency pointed to actual regulations that may contribute to a future decline in the fatal rollover rate for 15-passenger vans – new standards requiring electronic stability control and tire pressure monitoring systems, and amendments to existing standards, requiring improvements to tires, rear sear shoulder lap belts, and door locks.

Manufacturers – no doubt driven by bad press and litigation – began to make some of changes ahead of mandatory phase-ins.  The first GM 15-passenger vans with ESC came out in model year 2004, and became standard in 2005. Ford – the self-proclaimed safety leader –trailed, equipping its 15-passenger vans with ESC in model year 2006. Rear-seat shoulder-lap belts were not implemented on Ford vans until 2008. GM installed them in 2004. In model year 2007, Ford and GM began adding advanced air bags.

But, what to do about all of those older 15-passenger vans, still regularly pressed into service? According to NHTSA, as of July 1, 2007 the there were about 564,000 15-passenger vans registered in the US, and only 7 percent of the fleet was 2004 or newer.

The members of the Joy Fellowship Christian Assemblies were in a 1997 Ford Econoline, without electronic stability control or advanced airbags. Hell, a 1997 Ford Econoline only had lap belts in all of the inboard rear positions.

Guess for those folks warnings and tips will just have to do.

CROWNSVILLE, MD – Despite the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s assertions to the contrary, their warnings about the rollover propensities of 15-passenger vans have not stemmed the death toll, according to a new analysis of government data.

Statistician Randy Whitfield of Quality Control Systems Corporation says that the cumulative rate of deaths in 15-passenger van rollovers has actually risen since NHTSA started issuing the first of four consumer advisories from 2001 to 2005. One third of all the 15-passenger van rollover deaths since 1982 occurred after April 9, 2001, when the federal government first started warning the public about the vehicle’s hazards, once loaded to capacity with occupants and cargo.

Source: Randy & Alice Whitfield, Quality Control Systems Corp.

These crashes killed 1,036 persons and caused incapacitating injuries to an additional 1,820, Whitfield found. More than 5,500 persons were involved in fatal rollovers as drivers or passengers in the vans, of whom only 250 were uninjured – even when seat belts were used. Because the victims were relatively young, Whitfield calculated that 35,219 premature years of life (before age 70) have been lost in all rollovers of 15-passenger vans.

Whitfield sifted through 652 fatal rollover crashes that occurred between 1982 and 2005 in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System involving the Chevrolet Truck Express Van 3500 Extended, Chevrolet Truck Sportvan 1-Ton Extended, the Dodge Truck B350/B3500 Van (Bus), the Ford Truck E350, the Econoline Super Club Wagon, the GMC Truck Rally Van 1-Ton Extended, and the GMC Truck Savana Van 3500 Extended.

NHTSA, however, using a smaller subset of the same data, had come to the opposite conclusion. In a May 2005 press release, the agency reported that: “the public is responding to safety information about 15-passenger vans. Fatalities from 15-passenger van rollover crashes have declined 35 percent since advisories began in 2001.”

“Their results were just wrong,” Whitfield asserted. “I talked to them about it and they admitted it, but they never corrected their published research. The question is: What’s causing this to rise? When we studied the data, it showed no change in the numbers of people; no evidence that the vans were any less full than they had been.”

Whitfield did note that between 2004 and 2005, there was a decline in fatalities from 45 to 32. He identified DaimlerChrysler’s decision to discontinue production of the Dodge 15 passenger vans as a possible contributing factor to that drop.

NHTSA has launched other studies on 15-passenger vans. The most recent report examined tire maintenance on 15-passenger vans and found that 74 percent of all 15-passenger vans had significantly mis-inflated tires, increasing the prospect of a rollover crash. By contrast, 39 percent of passenger cars were found with significant inflation problems.

An earlier study looked at the effect of occupancy on rollover rates and found a that when loaded to above half their seating capacity, 15-passenger vans had 2.2 times the rollover rate as compared to when they were loaded to or below half their designed seating capacity.

In its advisories, NHTSA has repeatedly dispensed advice to consumers, recommending that all occupants wear safety belts; that drivers of 15-passenger are trained and experienced; that tire pressures are checked at least once a week and that no loads are placed on the van roof.

To date, Whitfield said, the agency has not published any research linking changes in consumer behavior to the 15-passenger van rollover rate.

“It would be one thing for them to prove this triumph, were the public actually doing what they said,” Whitfield said. “The danger is that NHTSA will believe its own public relations and that it will influence policies under the feeling that they are doing the right thing.”

Source: Randy & Alice Whitfield, Quality Control Systems Corp.

Copyright © Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., 2006