Jeep Cherokee Blame Game Heats Up

Rebecca Gervasi represents a dilemma for DaimlerChrysler Corp. and its popular Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility vehicle.

The Porterville, Calif., woman said she fell in love with her 1998 Grand Cherokee after she and her husband bought it. But in early November, Gervasi was injured trying to scramble back into her Jeep after she placed it in park and got out, only to watch it power away in reverse.

And now she is angry. “I think they had a responsibility to notify me that this was a possibility, whether or not they chose to [have a] recall,” Gervasi said.

DaimlerChrysler maintains that drivers are to blame for hundreds of such mishaps, but newly disclosed testimony from a Jeep engineer has raised questions about the auto maker’s assertions. Meanwhile, a federal safety agency will soon begin testing vehicles and taking transmissions apart, intensifying an investigation that could lead to a recall of 1.8 million Grand Cherokees.

More than 860 people have complained to the government or to DaimlerChrysler about “inadvertent rollaway in reverse” incidents involving Grand Cherokees, which have been blamed for at least 359 crashes, 184 injuries and five deaths, according to government figures.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a formal inquiry in July after investigators determined that several dozen consumer complaints pointed to a possible pattern. Typically in such cases, the process of officially determining whether there is a defect that should be addressed can take a year or longer.

The company has told NHTSA that it can find no mechanical defect and that virtually all the incidents were probably caused by drivers who inadvertently left their vehicles in reverse and got out.

“We haven’t found anything wrong, and yet we continue to look,” said Mike Rosenau, a company spokesman.

But John C. Koepele, a DaimlerChrysler engineer, has testified for the company in lawsuits that it is possible to position the gear shifter on the Grand Cherokee so that the indicator is partially in park, though not fully secured.

Plaintiffs suing the company have alleged that a poorly designed internal component can allow the Grand Cherokee’s transmission to come to rest in an unstable position between park and reverse. A door slamming, or an air-conditioner cycling can then cause the vehicle to slip into reverse, according to engineers for the plaintiffs.

Koepele’s statements raise a significant question: Could the Grand Cherokee be giving its drivers misleading feedback?

“We’ve got DaimlerChrysler claiming there is no evidence of a defect, but then we’ve got this company engineer testifying that it is possible to put that shift lever where it appears to be in park when, in fact, it is not,” said Sean Kane, a Massachusetts-based auto safety consultant who reviewed the testimony and DaimlerChrysler’s official response to federal regulators.

“The bad design can mislead the driver into thinking the vehicle is securely in park when it is not,” said Joan Claybrook, head of the Public Citizen advocacy group, who also reviewed the documents. Claybrook is a former administrator of the federal auto safety agency.

Federal investigators have been reluctant to blame drivers alone. The rate of park-to-reverse complaints for Grand Cherokees is more than five times greater than for any similar SUV made by a different company. If only drivers were to blame, that would suggest that Grand Cherokee drivers were somehow more error-prone than, say, Ford Explorer drivers.

Koepele was questioned in June 2000 by a lawyer for an Alabama woman who obtained a financial settlement from the auto maker. He gave similar responses earlier that year in a New York case, transcripts show.

Koepele’s answers were couched in technical language and carefully qualified. He testified that it is possible to position the transmission between reverse and park but insisted that the condition is not a safety hazard, claiming it can only be replicated by experts such as himself.

“I can know what I’m looking for and what I want to do--I can achieve that,” he said.

Koepele said he had to put both hands on the gear shifter and start from the park position to find the spot. “That’s not something that a normal shift with one hand will achieve,” he said.

But others say they can do it with one hand, and they don’t have to start from park.

“If he can do it on purpose, then somebody else can do it by accident,” said Simon Tamny, an Ohio engineer who has testified for plaintiffs.

A NHTSA investigator was able to reproduce the problem three times on a Grand Cherokee that a consumer had complained about. He shifted through reverse until the gear indicator partially showed “park.” The vehicle remained motionless for 10 to 25 seconds before going into reverse. His detailed description of the test made no mention of two-handed shifting, documents show.

Rosenau, the DaimlerChrysler spokesman, said that the experiments by Koepele and those of the NHTSA engineer do not reflect actual driving conditions that a consumer would face.

“The real-world situations are the ones that people who drive our cars encounter, not ‘professional trained in finding a place between park and reverse’ situations,” Rosenau said.

Rosenau said DaimlerChrysler is studying the ergonomic interaction between drivers and the Grand Cherokee. “We’ve been doing a variety of studies to try to figure out the role of the occupant in the event--male, female; height, weight--since we haven’t been able to figure out anything mechanical.”

Gervasi, 32, a mother of three boys, constitutes a case study of her own. Her accident happened as she was on her way to a Friday afternoon class, she recalled. Gervasi had stopped her Grand Cherokee to chat with a neighborhood friend. She said she put the vehicle in park and got out, leaving the engine running.

“If it had been in reverse, I couldn’t have gotten out because my car rolls back when I put it in reverse,” she said. She did not set the emergency brake, a precaution recommended by safety experts but commonly ignored by drivers.

As Gervasi walked over, her friend shouted, “Becky, your Jeep!”

“I looked back and my Jeep was taking off down the road by itself,” Gervasi said. Fearing that it would hit a nearby house, she ran after it. Gervasi managed to get the door open and grab the steering wheel, but then the 4,000-pound vehicle hit a curb, slamming her into the doorjamb.

“It hit me really hard,” Gervasi said. Nonetheless, she managed to scramble into the driver’s seat. As she was about to put her foot on the brake, her Jeep hit a tree, throwing her into the steering column.

Her husband drove Gervasi to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with neck strain, a sprained back and bruises to her chest wall, medical records show. Six weeks later, she was still receiving physical therapy and planning to see a neurologist for severe headaches.

Once, Gervasi had regarded her Jeep as the perfect car. “It’s a beautiful car, it [worked] great for me and the kids,” she said. “But I’m scared to get in it, and I won’t drive it now.”

She is consulting with a lawyer to determine whether to file a lawsuit against the auto maker. Government records show at least 20 lawsuits have been filed against the company, but the actual number could be higher. Attorneys in San Francisco filed a class-action suit earlier this year.

Litigation could create an image problem for DaimlerChrysler, which markets the Grand Cherokee as a safe vehicle. “Think of it as a 4,000-lb. guardian angel,” reads one magazine advertisement, which touts the Jeep’s advanced air bags, four-wheel anti-lock brakes and other features.

“Other than Mercedes, Jeep is probably the second-best brand name that DaimlerChrysler has,” said Christopher Cedergren, an analyst with Nextrend, a Thousand Oaks market research firm. “The most important thing out there is brand image and identity. If you hurt the brand, there is no profit.”

DaimlerChrysler is aggressively defending the Grand Cherokee’s safety record. But in some instances, federal safety officials say the company’s explanations have only created skepticism.

One such case is that of Linda Haller, a 36-year-old New Jersey woman who was crushed to death by her Grand Cherokee in 1998. Haller was found trapped between the open driver’s door and the door frame of her garage. There were no witnesses.

DaimlerChrysler said the 5-foot-2 woman was probably backing out to the street when she saw a child’s cassette tape on her garage floor. With the vehicle still in reverse, the company said, Haller must have put her foot on the brake pedal and reached from the elevated driver’s seat of the SUV toward the garage floor.

“The driver was reaching out of the vehicle for the tape or another object after engaging the transmission in the reverse position, when her foot slipped off the brake pedal, causing the vehicle to move rearward,” DaimlerChrysler said in an official submission to NHTSA.

But Trent Dickey, a lawyer for the Haller family, said the company’s theory is not believable. “No way could someone 5-2 reach the ground, nor would anyone that short even try. That would be nuts.”