Ralph Hoar, 56; Car Safety Advocate
Ralph Hoar, a veteran consumer safety advocate who waged campaigns for product recalls in the automotive industry, has died, the advocacy group he founded, Safetyforum.com, has announced. He was 56.
Hoar died of complications associated with prostate cancer on Friday at Virginia Hospital Center in Fairfax, Va., Lee Jones, Hoar’s successor as executive director of the organization, said Tuesday.
Under Hoar’s direction, Safetyforum.com, based in Arlington, Va., became a major resource for trial attorneys filing suits against auto and tire manufacturers. The group publishes industry analyses, lobbies Congress and imports trial exhibits for product liability litigation.
Hoar is credited with helping secure the recall of 4.5 million Chrysler minivans with defective rear gate latches in 1995 and 8.9 million Ford vehicles in 1996 whose ignition switches would catch fire. After Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. recalled 6.5 million tires in August 2000, Hoar’s firm conducted an analysis of tires Ford was using to replace them and claimed that they also were prone to fail. Ford recalled an additional 13 million Firestone Wilderness AT tires in May.
In 1994, Hoar helped force Nissan to repurchase more than 30,000 fire-prone minivans, the first such buyback in vehicle history.
“The impact Ralph had on those issues was enormous. I cannot imagine a consumer world without him,” Jones said. “He was an agitator. He took on issues that no one else was willing to take on. He was not afraid of anyone or anything. No one intimidated him.”
In 1989, Hoar founded Ralph Hoar & Associates in Arlington, Va., a safety research firm that dealt with product, workplace and environmental issues, particularly in the auto industry. He launched Safetyforum.com in 1996 to take advantage of the Internet’s reach.
“Safetyforum’s work on the Ford-Firestone story illustrates the vital role that the Internet will play in any future public debate centering around consumer safety-related issues,” said C. Tab Turner, a Dallas attorney who has been a leading critic of Ford sport-utility vehicles and their involvement with Firestone tires in fatal crashes triggered by tire failures.
“The Internet has revolutionized communication, and Safetyforum.com is on the cutting edge of using the Internet as a tool to reveal hazardous products and practices.”
Hoar had a withering way with words. In an interview with The Times a year ago, he criticized Ford Motor Co.’s early contention that the bulk of the bad Firestone tires came from one plant in Decatur, Ill.
“The Ford analysis of the data allows them to maintain the fiction that the problem is in Decatur, and by maintaining that fiction they avoid recalling all Wilderness tires and get to use Wilderness tires made elsewhere as replacement tires,” he said. “I hope this [Safetyforum.com’s analysis] shows that that king has no clothes.”
Hoar is survived by his mother; his partner, Russwin N. Francisco; a son, Jason Hoar Stryker; a daughter, Adrienne E. Hoar; and two brothers, James and Robert.
