Tire Failures’ Obscured Toll: Paralyzed Victims
The toll from defective Firestone tires mounted on Ford Explorers has largely been measured by the 101 deaths counted so far, but as investigators delve into about 400 injury cases they are finding horrific tragedies that have left some victims paraplegics or quadriplegics.
These victims will have to cope with shortened life expectancies as they face the prospect of raising enough money--sometimes millions of dollars--to pay looming medical bills. The costs also include an emotional toll, changing the lives of these victims’ families who must now grapple with caring for their loved ones.
The number of people left paralyzed in these crashes is also bringing fresh attention to the tendency of some vehicles’ roofs to cave in during rollover accidents, which can cause fatal or crippling head and neck injuries. Consumer safety advocates have criticized the auto makers for not strengthening roofs and NHTSA for not toughening the roof-crush standard.
A close look at some of these tragedies, alongside an analysis of government crash data, shows that in many cases the human cost was raised by occupants simply not wearing their seat belts. But in others, the violence of the crash--and the damage to the vehicle--was so extreme that wearing a seat belt was not enough to save passengers or drivers from death or crippling injuries.
Consider the case of Christy McKinney.
On the day she turned 21, McKinney was running an errand with her 7-month-old son, Conner, in her Ford Explorer when the tread on her left rear tire peeled loose, causing her car to sail off an embankment on Interstate 40 near Alma, Ark.
The sport-utility vehicle rolled over twice. Conner was ejected from his baby seat, suffering cuts and bruises to his face. He was the lucky one. His mother was thrown from the vehicle--even though she was wearing her seat belt, according to her attorney--and landed on the highway’s grassy shoulder. McKinney and her son were rush to a hospital in nearby Fort Smith, where doctors declared her a quadriplegic.
Her mother, Sheri, was forced to give up her job, leave her 13-year-old son behind, and borrow money from friends and relatives so that she could watch over Christy, who has been transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
Christy cannot speak, but her mother can read her lips.
“Everyday I dry her tears [that] roll down her cheeks when she says, ‘I miss my baby,’ ” said Sheri, 39. “I try to hold myself together. I can’t let her see me fall apart. But she is my baby and her crying makes me cry.”
NHTSA officials said they don’t know how many people have ended up like Christy--seriously injured as a result of an accident involving defective Firestone tires.
The 101 reported deaths and 400 injuries over several years are a small fraction of the 41,611 deaths and 3.2 million injuries caused by traffic collisions last year alone. About 8,000 of those injured are people who will never walk again, according to officials with the National Spinal Cord Injury Assn.
Most of the people killed or injured in Firestone-related crashes were in sport-utility vehicles that rolled over, a key category of fatal accidents that NHTSA officials say is now on the rise. In 1999, NHTSA estimated 1,898 deaths and 47,000 injuries in SUV rollover crashes alone.
About 78% of the 1999 fatalities were drivers and passengers who were not wearing their seat belts, according to the Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which tracks fatalities that occur on public highways.
The fatality data also show that since 1990, 64% of those killed in Ford Explorers because of tire failures and subsequent rollovers were not wearing seat belts.
“That is a pretty telling number that the likelihood of surviving goes up exponentially if you are wearing a seat belt,” said NHTSA spokesperson Rae Tyson.
But during a rollover crash in an SUV, wearing a seat belt is no guarantee against death and major injuries: When the roof collapses, even belted occupants are vulnerable to head and neck injuries that could lead to paralysis or death.
Salena Schmidtke, a biomechanical engineer and a partner with Virginia-based research firm Strategic Safety, which helped launch the Firestone probe, said she has observed large numbers of roof-crush injuries to occupants of Ford Explorers outfitted with Firestone tires.
Schmidtke said NHTSA’s roof-crush standards are too lenient, noting that pressure is mounting to toughen them.
“Ford knows their cars will roll over, so why aren’t they creating cars with tougher roofs?” she asked.
Ford maintains that its Explorer is safe. It said that crashes involving Explorers outfitted with Firestone tires result from a “tire problem.”
Bridgestone/Firestone, though it acknowledges making some defective tires, says there may be other factors contributing to the crashes, including the rollover propensity of SUVs and improper tire inflation.
“The people who died or became paraplegic or quadriplegic were apparently doing everything they were supposed to be doing, like wearing their restraints and minding their own business,” said Craig McLellan, a San Diego attorney who specializes in rollover cases.
Christy McKinney, a former waitress who spent most of her time caring for her infant son, was doing just that, according to her mother. Christy was dropping off Conner, who McKinney calls “my little Christmas present” because he was born on Christmas Day, at a baby sitter’s house so she could spend her birthday, as she always had, with her twin sister Misty.
McKinney’s accident occurred on Aug. 11, two days after Firestone launched a voluntary recall of ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires. Relatives said she didn’t know about the recall and received no notices.
Since the accident, she has been removed from a ventilator. Plastic tubes attached to her stomach provide her food supply. Her body has become emaciated. She now weighs about 75 pounds, down from the 105 pounds before the accident.
The small town of Alma, Ark. (population 3,672), about 30 minutes away from Tulsa, Okla., has been rallying to help the McKinney family. A local church and a neighborhood bake shop are collecting donations. Next week, seven blues bands will play at Rooster’s Blues Bar in Fort Smith to raise funds for the family.
McKinney would need at least $2.1 million to cover her medical expenses alone for the remainder of her life, according to rough estimate provided by Michael J. DeVivo, director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Because of the accident, McKinney’s life expectancy has plummeted by about 20 years, DeVivo said.
DeVivo and others say it is impossible to measure the emotional costs these accidents take on the victims and their families.
Take, for example, Joshua Miller, 22, also from Arkansas, who was involved in a separate Firestone-related crash that left him a paraplegic.
Four days after McKinney’s accident, Miller was driving his 1986 Ford Bronco II on Interstate 40 when his left rear tire shredded. The SUV flipped four times, throwing him out onto the opposite lane of the freeway, according to Miller’s father, Philip, a vice president of a local bank.
Minutes earlier, Joshua, a former second baseman for a local community college, was at his parents’ home copying his transcripts in preparation for his transfer to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
Philip said he had bought the Bronco for his son because he thought it was safe. Four months before the accident, Joshua bought new ATX tires at a Sears outlet.
After the crash, Joshua was airlifted to Baptist Hospital in Little Rock, where doctors later told his parents their son had suffered waist-down paralysis and would spend the remainder of his life in a wheelchair.
Last week, Philip was remodeling the family’s home to make the house wheelchair-accessible for when Joshua is released.
Philip said his son still plans on going to college next semester.
Joshua, a former body builder who worked at a local gym, “ wants to jump right back in and keep going,” his father said.
Philip has hired an attorney, Jim Jackson of Bryant, Ark., to file a suit against Ford and Firestone. “What happened to Josh was criminal because there was so little information put out on the [dangers linked to] these tires,” Philip said. “There’s nothing they could say or do, or no amount of money that can make this right. We’re going to live with this the rest of our lives like the rest of the families who suffered tragedies.”
The Terraszas family of Vacaville, Calif., are dealing with their own tragedy--except that Elizabeth Terrazcas doesn’t know all of it.
Elizabeth, her husband, Stephen, and their 3-year-old son, Nicholas, were returning from a Lake Tahoe vacation Aug. 22, when Stephen felt a sharp jolt on the steering wheel. It was the right rear ATX tire tread peeling off its steel belts. Their late-model Ford Explorer flipped thrice on Interstate 80, landing on its roof.
Stephen, who suffered a deep gash on his right shoulder, looked in the back seat to see his wife suspended by her seat belt. Blood was pouring down her head.
Nicholas was lying unconscious in the shoulder of the busy freeway.
The family was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Hospital, where Nicholas was pronounced dead.
Elizabeth, a teacher in the Vacaville School District, has suffered brain injuries and is recuperating at a Castro Valley rehabilitation center.
Stephen still hasn’t told his wife about their only child’s death, according to Brad Corsiglia, an attorney hired by the family. Elizabeth “would say that Nicholas was a gift from God,” Corsiglia said.
For eight years, the couple had tried to have a child. Fertility treatment hadn’t worked so the couple decided to adopt a child. A few months into the adoption process, Elizabeth became pregnant with Nicholas.
Before Nicholas was taken off life support, Stephen made one final gesture in his son’s honor. He gave doctors permission to harvest his son’s organs and donate them to other patients.
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Times staff writer Sunny Kaplan in Washington contributed to this report.
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SALES RISE
Ford says Explorer sales were up slightly in September. C1
TIRE REPORT
Continental General may have understated a tire problem. C4
