Carrying a Load of Risk

A recent string of deadly wrecks has raised alarm about the rollover risks of 15-passenger vans, which become more unstable when used for the very reason they are purchased: to carry large numbers of people.

Four people were killed and eight others injured on a church outing last month when their 15-passenger van flipped over near Wichita Falls, Texas. The same week, two members of a college fraternity were killed and 12 others injured in a van rollover in Arkansas. In Illinois, 11 people heading for a visit with prison inmates died earlier this year when their 15-seat van tumbled and was flattened by a Mack truck.

And a van rollover on U.S. 101 in San Luis Obispo County in October 1999 killed seven members of an Eagle Rock church and injured seven others.

From 1994 to 1999, 279 people perished and hundreds were hurt in single-vehicle rollovers of 15-passenger vans, according to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, a federal database.

The large passenger vans, produced by Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and the Dodge division of DaimlerChrysler, are workhorses of corporate van pools and are widely used to shuttle college sports teams and church groups as well as pupils and preschoolers on field trips and after-school activities. But critics say their top-heavy design makes them particularly unforgiving in emergency steering maneuvers or when a tire fails or they skid on ice.

Patricia Sturns of Jasper, Texas, said she’ll never get over the loss of her 20-year-old son, Samuel Jason Sturns, one of four members of the Prairie View A&M; track team who died 16 months ago when a van carrying them to a track meet flipped over. Sturns said she had assumed the track team rode on regular buses with professional drivers, and never worried about her son’s safety.

“It’s heartbreaking, and it makes me as a parent want to tell other parents, ‘Know what they’re going in,’ ” she said.

Concern about the vans’ stability has triggered government action.

In January, the Department of Health and Human Services ordered local Head Start programs to phase out use of the vans in favor of vehicles meeting all federal school bus safety standards. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating several recent van wrecks, has urged states to prohibit their use in local school transportation programs. And in April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an unusual consumer advisory, warning that the rollover risk of the vans becomes dramatically greater with 10 or more people on board.

Consumer advocates contend the vans are among the worst vehicles for rollover because of their propensity to tip and the large passenger loads they are meant to carry.

But makers of the vans defend them and blame most of the casualties on inexperienced drivers and failure of passengers to wear seat belts, rather than any inherent safety flaws.

The big vans “are extremely safe,” said Sara Tatchio, safety communications manager for Ford, whose E350 Super Club Wagon, a people-hauling cousin of the Econoline cargo van, is the most popular of the 15-seaters.

“We feel they’re safe vehicles when properly driven,” said Dominick Infante of Chrysler, which makes the Dodge Ram Maxiwagon. But “this is a different kind of vehicle and needs to be treated” as such, Infante said.

A spokesman for General Motors, whose 15-seat models include the Chevrolet Express 3500, declined comment, saying, “We’re not going to participate in this story.”

Although the vans essentially are small buses, buyers or operators are not required to have a special license or training.

As a group, light trucks--including SUVs, pickups and vans--have an above-average risk of tipping over. And federal crash data show that the 15-seat vans, when carrying a light load, have about the same rollover risk as other light trucks--or about two to three times the rate of most passenger cars.

But when the vans are doing what they’re made for--hauling large numbers of people--their stability is seriously compromised, a government study has shown.

When you “load a vehicle that’s got a high center of gravity to begin with . . . you increase the potential for rollover for sure,” said Joe Osterman, director of the office of highway safety at the National Transportation Safety Board.

Drawing on crash data from seven states, the study by NHTSA researchers compared the rollover rates of 15-passenger vans carrying 10 occupants or more with those carrying four occupants or fewer. According to the study, vans with heavy loads were more than twice as likely to flip over as ones with light loads.

The reason is that passengers ride above the center of gravity, so that each additional occupant makes a van more top-heavy and less stable. The same is true for other popular people-haulers, such as minivans and smaller passenger vans. But the NHTSA research showed that the pattern with the 15-seaters is more profound.

As evidence, the study compared changes in stability factors of the large vans and other vehicles when all were loaded to their gross vehicle weights.

The stability factor, a rough measure of rollover resistance, is calculated by dividing the track width of a vehicle (the distance from tire to tire) by twice the height of the vehicle’s center of gravity. The lower the number, the more likely a vehicle is to tip over.

According to the NHTSA study, the stability factor for a Ford 15-passenger van carrying only a driver was 1.07, which is on the low end. But at its gross weight rating of 9,100 pounds--the weight equivalent of the van plus 15 riders and some luggage--the van’s stability factor fell 11% to 0.95.

By contrast, stability factors for a Dodge Caravan minivan--calculated when lightly loaded and then fully loaded--dropped from 1.24 to 1.20, or by just 3%. For a seven-passenger Ford van, the stability factors were 1.16 lightly loaded and 1.11 heavily loaded, a change of less than 5%.

When it released the study in April, NHTSA simultaneously issued a consumer advisory on the risks of vans with heavy loads. In its statement, NHTSA stressed the importance of using seat belts and having experienced drivers.

Safety advocates said that the message--drive safer--was insufficient, and that the vans should be redesigned or taken off the road.

“If the simple addition of passengers to a vehicle causes it to roll over in a crash when it otherwise wouldn’t . . . then the vehicle is defective,” said Randy Whitfield, a statistician and safety consultant based in Maryland.

Some of the more publicized accidents involving the big vans have killed and injured college athletes. Last year, in a six-week period, there were at least five rollovers involving college sports teams traveling to competitions.

The worst occurred Feb. 10, 2000, when a 15-passenger Ford van carrying members of the Prairie View A&M; track team flipped over near Karnack, Texas, killing four and injuring six others. Several victims and family members filed claims against Ford, which blamed the accident on unsafe driving but ultimately paid undisclosed settlements.

Samuel Sturns, one of those who died, was a sophomore on the dean’s list who “had huge plans for becoming a civil engineer,” said Patricia Sturns, his mother.

“I’m more angry at Ford Motor Co. than I am at the colleges and the churches and the people that use there vans, . . . because they don’t know, just like I didn’t know,” she said.

Texas lawyer Jeffrey G. Wigington, who represented the Sturns family, said he was surprised to learn in the course of the litigation that Ford had exempted the vans from the corporate rollover resistance guidelines that the firm has required other light-truck models, such as the Explorer SUV, to meet.

The guidelines require vehicles to pass a computer simulation of a so-called J-turn test, executing a series of severe steering maneuvers at 55 mph without simultaneously lifting two wheels off the pavement. Ford officials have testified in lawsuits that the guidelines apply to truck models with gross weight ratings of up to 8,500 pounds. The rating for 15-passenger vans is about 9,100 pounds.

Wigington called it “unreasonable and irresponsible” to exempt the vans when “Ford knows [they] will be used to transport college students, church groups . . . and other consumers in large numbers.”

Thomas J. Feaheny, a former Ford vice president who has appeared as an expert witness in lawsuits against the company, charged that the exemption is a product of the “long-standing unwritten rule in Ford engineering” to “never run a test that would document a catastrophic result.”

But Tatchio of Ford said these complaints are off base, and that the vans are subjected to different, though rigorous, lane change and slalom tests. “The rugged handling course it does go through . . . is much more of a reflection of how the vehicle would be used in the real world,” Tatchio said.

Stability testing of the Ford vans was a key issue in one of the only van rollover suits ever tried--a Kentucky case that ended in a $20.1-million verdict against Ford in 1999. Called the “pony club” case, it involved the rollover wreck of a van carrying Australian teenagers to an international equestrian competition. Three people died and several others were injured. Ford blamed the accident on unsafe driving and has appealed.

Ford also faces three lawsuits in Los Angeles County Superior Court stemming from the van wreck near Atascadero, Calif., that killed seven members of an Eagle Rock church in October 1999 and caused several injuries, including brain damage. Trial of the cases is scheduled for December. Ford has denied responsibility for the casualties, blaming excessive speed, driver error and lack of seat belt use.

Milton Chace, a vehicle safety consultant and former research scientist at the University of Michigan, said drivers of the vans should take precautions to reduce the risk. Among them:

* Avoid operating the vans fully occupied with adults.

* Keep the roof rack empty and the gas tank full and carry any heavy cargo on the floor to avoid making the vans more top-heavy.

* Drive conservatively and to the extent possible avoid emergency avoidance maneuvers.

* Consider installing offset wheels, which improve stability by slightly widening the vehicle’s track.

* Use standard-size tires of the highest possible quality and change them before they wear down. The tires, Chace said, “must never fail.”