I overheard this on the TV news, and wasn’t able to find an online source for the news report (perhaps someone else can?). And I should say in advance that I was only paying partial attention to the TV so I probably have gotten some details wrong.
The situation was that an automobile accident which caused either death or serious injury resulted in a lawsuit against Ford. FoMoCo was then found liable on the basis of the cruise control sticking in the car, causing unintended acceleration and thus the accident.
I think it has been suggested in the past that almost all cases of “unintended acceleration” in cars are really caused by panicing drivers pushing on the accelerator rather than the brake, but for the purpose of this debate let’s set that point aside and suppose that the cruise control really did go wonky and result in the car accelerating uncommanded.
The question then becomes: who is liable for this accident? If I recall correctly (and I may not), it happened at an intersection and one car hit another.
That’s the debate. I’ll post my opinion on it in a response to this thread.
I don’t see enough facts to draw a valid conclusion. Exactly how did th cruise control fail? What options to disable the cruise control were available to the driver? How much time between the awareness of failure and the accident? There might be other factors that need to be considered, depending upon the answers to these questions.
Given what I recall hearing, I think that FoMoCo should not be liable, even if the cruise control failed. I look at it like this:
Automobiles are dangerous, potentially deadly objects, and as such I think that excepting certain types of design defects, the ultimate responsibility for safe operation lies with the driver, just as the ultimate responsibility for an aircraft rests with the pilot, or a ship with the captain. In the real world, hardware failures happen due to lack of maintainence, parts wearing out, or whatever else, and they can happen to the braking system, the engine, or whatever else. I feel it is the obligation of the driver to be prepared to handle such failures where that is reasonably possible.
In this case in particular, even if we assume “unintended acceleration”, it is possible for the driver to retain control of the car in several ways. First, the brakes are strong enough to stop virtually any car ever made even if full throttle is applied at the same time, so merely stomping on the brake would have stopped the car unless there was a very unlikely simultanous failure of the braking system. Second, nearly every car ever made has a transmission, and taking the car out of gear by either depressing the clutch (on a standard) or shifting to neutral (on an automatic) will disconnect the engine from the drivetrain. Since there are at least two other independent ways to address the problem, I feel that the failure to do so implies a lack of sufficient skill to be operating the vehicle in a safe manner. I would not see the driver as bearing any responsibility if it was a failure that could not be reasonably dealt with by the driver, such as perhaps a total loss of all steering control. But that wasn’t the case here, and further, I think using the cruise control near an intersection is also not a safe way to operate the vehicle.
I do agree that some design defects might be the fault of the manufacturer. But one does have to be a little careful with this, because while there can be negligent design, that is not automatically implied by any given hardware failure. It’s impossible to design a perfectly reliable device as complex as a car, so a hardware failure doesn’t automatically imply faulty design, even if in hindsight a different design could have prevented the failure. (The different design might lead to other types of failures, or might be too expensive to be practical, for example).
You’re right there of course. But perhaps, if we’re willing to formulate a debate that we understand doesn’t necessarily correspond to the actual event, it still might be worth discussing as a hypothetical situation with details we make up.
Are you now or have you ever been an employee of Ford Motor Company ,It’s affiliates or It’s Legal departmemts?
This is really a can of worms.
If the motor companies are not held responsible for their product then the quality will go down.
Is it the fault of the company that a component went bad?
Is it practical to assume that a “normal” driver would be able to think quick enough or understand their vehicle well enough to perform the correct manuvers to avoid the “unaviodable” accident.
I Dunno.
I assume that I could have done something to avoid the accident because I spend my days behind the wheel. That is My Job. On the other hand, my aged mother who still retains her dexterity and driving abilities and focus could not be expected to do the same.
Nope. Never even owned one of their cars, actually. Don’t much care for them.
I agree there. But also I think it needs to be carefully considered. Some things are clearly gross design defects, for which the mfg needs to be held liable. Other things are more like normal failures. Any complex mechanical device made en masse and used in real world conditions will fail. I think one has to separate truely negligent design from the “shit happens” category of problems. And it really is a greyscale, isn’t it? Not B&W, I think.
In this particular case, we don’t know if the failure was a design defect in the cruise control (say, something that happened to 1 in 5 cars in the first year, rather than 1 in 500000 cars), or whether it was caused by some circumstance totally beyond Ford’s control. Really, how much liability I see for FoMoCo depends on that answer - could be a lot, or could be none at all. But independent of that answer, I still think that if one operates a dangerous device (car, bandsaw, whatever), one has the obligation to be prepared to handle reasonably manageable failures.
Does anyone recall the outcome of the case where a woman bought an older used car, got in an accident, then sued the maker because it didn’t have an air bag (which she knew full well), even though they weren’t yet required equipment?
Now substitute “aircraft” for “automobiles”.
In the 1970s, U.S. aircraft makers built something like 15,000 aircraft per year at the peak. Studies have shown that most aircraft accidents are caused by pilot error. The Beechcraft Bonanza had a “design defect” that was uncorrected for 40 years; but the V-tails were not falling out of the sky as long as the pilot flew the aircraft within its design envelope. Several Bonanzas suffered in-flight structural failures of the wings… when incompetent or inattentive pilots flew into thunderstorm cells. IMO, exceeding design limitations and flying into conditions unsuitable for a particulat aircraft constitutes “pilot error”.
Cessna was hit with a $41 million penalty for a couple that were killed while flying one of their aircraft. The NTSB ruled “pilot error”, but the family of the deceased won the unbelievable amount anyway.
Aircraft manufacturers were seen as companies with “deep pockets”, so they were hit with lawsuit after lawsuit until, I read, that 50% of the cost of a new aircraft was to pay the insurance premium.
Added to that was that the manufacturer was liable for every aircraft they ever produced! Like the woman who sued because her car didn’t have an airbag, Cessna et al were “responsible” for “design defects” in aircraft that were conceived and built long before the technology to “correct” the “defect” was available.
Piper declared bankruptcy. Cessna stopped building piston singles (and eventually piston-engined aircraft altogether, IIRC). From a high of 15,000 aircraft per year, new aircraft construction plummeted to a point where 1,000 units was considered a good year.
Most private aircraft flying today are 20 to 40 years old. Fortunately, airworthiness certificates are required and most are in good repair. The 6-year-old Cessna 172 that my dad bought in 1976 for $10,200 now fetches close to $40,000. For the same plane. With all of the additional hours on it. His '68 Cessna 182, which he bought for $19,000 in the early 80s now costs about $60,000 to $67,000.
A few years ago, Congress passed a tort reform bill that limits aircraft manufacturers’ liability to 18 years. Lawyer’s groups are trying to have it repealed.
Yes, auto makers sometimes deliver poorly-designed cars to the public; and yes, they should be held accountable. Too, lawsuits are not going to put Ford, et al, out of business. But I think that frivolous lawsuits are a danger. We pay the price; not the maker.
In the OP, I would say the “stuck cruise control” was a contributing factor to the accident; but the liability should be shared by the driver because the driver should have been competent to handle an emergency situation.
I used to have an Oldsmobile Delta 88 in the late eighties, and I definitely had problems with the cruise control causing unexpected acceleration. I am 100% sure that my acceleration was not caused by my foot actually being on the gas. Both times it happened to me, my foot was already on the break, because I was stopping at a traffic light. I had slowed down to about half of my original speed when the car jumped forward and the engine went nuts trying to accelerate. Luckily, since my foot was already on the break, all I had to do was mash down on the break harder. I was also lucky in that I was far enough away from the car in front of me that I was able to stop before my insurance rate quadrupled. In both instances, my engine was still racing after I had come to a complete stop. I put the car in park, and turned off the engine. After restarting the engine, everything was fine, as if nothing had happened. The first time it happened, my cruise control switch was in the “on” position (“on” as in “able to be activated”, but it was not activated), so I turned it to the “off” position, assuming that my problem was solved. The second time however, it was in the “off” position, so my solution was to have the cruise control system taken out back and shot (read – I removed it).
The answer to the OP my well be “neither.” The fact is, sometimes shit happens, and truly no one did anything wrong. Our culture is deeply uncomfortable with this–we stree free will and personal responsibility. all of that is important, and certainly the actions of a person or a company are the primary determenants of that person or company’s destiny. Still, sometimes babies get cancer, lightning strikes, and extremly complex mechanisms sometimes unpredictably fail to function.
Every lawyer in America should have a sign in there officethe says “Shit happens”.
I agree - but it seems like there is some aspect of our culture that is terrified of expecting even modest levels of competence. The same thing shows up in other ways in our schools.
The situation with light a/c manufacturers is unfortunate. I’m not too familiar with the specific suit or suits that caused Piper to fold, but I do know there have been many in which the NTSB finds the pilot 100% at fault for an accident, such as “controlled flight into terrain” type accidents, yet the grieving family wins big bucks from the aircraft mfg, or the mfg settles out of court to avoid a huge award. I think that often, juries rule based on emotion, not facts and reason. They feel justifyably bad for the poor guy that augered in, and figure the surviving family “deserves” compensation. Few have the heart to say to a sobbing relative, “it was a terrible tragedy, but that doesn’t mean Cessna owes you a truckload of cash.”
Here is a brief excerpt from an aviation newsletter about a recent lawsuit involving Cessna:
This sort of thing happens quite a lot.
There’s probably a larger debate here about whether juries should be knowledgable about the subject in the trail. Should a jury ruling on an aviation accident be composed of members that don’t know a VORTAC from a VASI? Should one judging possible design flaws in an airframe have no clue about materials engineering or fatigue analysis in metals?
I seem to remember something about a court case about a runaway car. IIRC a wire would short intermittently and the car would race forward. They had a hard time finding the problem because the wire was not in the cruise control circuit. Something about the wire would short causing this to happen causing something else to happen,triggering an SCR and it would lunge.
Pretty hard to engineer wierd stuff like that.
