July 16, 2008 Statement before House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit by Patrick James
American Center for Van and Tire Safety
5013 Jade Pasture Lane, Knoxville, TN 37918
www.acfvats.org
Statement by Patrick James
July 16, 2008
Good morning, my name is Patrick James and I am here with my wife Kelli and son Austin to talk with you about the deadly combination of 15-passenger vans, aged tires and vehicles that are rollover prone and lack occupant protections.
I am testifying before this committee one year to the day that I last talked with my daughter. She was excited about going to play with her old softball team in a tournament in Savannah Georgia the following day. Twenty-four hours later my family and many friends’ lives were changed forever. At 12:30 PM on July 17th, 2007 we started receiving phone calls from friends informing us that Alexis had been in an accident. The vans’ left rear tire had ample tread and looked like new. But it was 13 years old. And when it failed on a highway in South Carolina, the van rolled over and my daughter was ejected—even though she was wearing her seat belt. I was pulling into the airport parking lot when I received a phone call from the ER doctor. He informed me that my daughter, “Lexie” James had died from heart failure. I remember sitting in my car looking into the lobby of the airport watching my wife and son, and knowing what I had to do—go tell her mom and brother that Alexis had passed away.
I never gave a second thought to the vehicle Lexie would be taking to her tournament. But I have spent the last 12 months learning everything I could about 15-passenger vans and tire safety. And what I found out stunned me.
These vehicles, which were first introduced in the 1970s and have changed little since, have a long history of single-vehicle rollover accidents and a general lack of crashworthiness. They are more prone to rollover than other vehicles and have higher rollover fatality rates than other passenger vehicles. The odds of rollover for a 15-passenger van increase more than 400 percent when the van is fully loaded. From 1997 to 2006, 15-passenger van crashes caused 1,090 occupant fatalities. 534 of these people died in preventable crashes.
I have also learned that tires degrade over time and heat exposure, regardless of whether they have been used or have adequate tread. As early as 1990, some auto manufacturers began warning consumers about the use of tires older than six years. Last August, NHTSA submitted a report to Congress on tire aging that affirmed this warning. The agency cited statistics from a large insurance company showing that 27 percent of its policy holders were from the warm weather states of Texas, California, Louisiana, Florida, and Arizona. But 77 percent of the tire claims came from those states and 84 percent of these claims were for tires over 6 years old. According to a survey by the Rubber Manufacturers Association,16.4 percent of tires in service are six years old or older.
Most tires will wear out before they “age out.” But, there are many circumstances in which older tires end up on vehicles. The most common is the full-size spare that is put into service after many years in the trunk or under the car. Many 15-passenger vans, are owned by community groups that don’t use them on a daily or even a weekly basis. If the annual mileage is low, the possibility exists that the tires could exceed their safe, useful life. Our small-scale study found that about 23 percent of 15-passenger vans surveyed have tires that are ten or more years old.
I didn’t know any of that before July 17, 2007. But I have dedicated that last year to informing as many people as I can about these facts. And in February my family founded the American Center for Van and Tire Safety, to warn the public about these significant dangers.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned is that that 15-passenger van rollover crashes are the most extreme and horrifying example of what is missing in our current rollover occupant protection regulations and that tire age degradation is something most people, including tire service professionals, are unaware of.
In any crash, it isn’t just one thing that saves the driver or the passenger from injury or death. It isn’t one thing that keeps the crash from happening in the first place. It’s a lot of elements working together. And as I sit before you now, on July 16, 2008 – knowing everything I know – there are still many pieces missing in our federal safety regulations to prevent and reduce the harm from rollover crashes.
We’ve taken a few forward steps. Many federal safety standards for passenger vehicles and light trucks have been expanded to include new 15-passenger vans. The SAFETEA-LU bill of 2005 requires NHTSA to issue a report on tire aging. The agency has begun to upgrade the roof crush standard. And, last month, it issued a consumer advisory that included some information about aged tires.
But the roof crush standard has stalled. The final tire aging report with rulemaking recommendations remains in the agency’s hands. It’s still near impossible for the average person – or even a service technician – to read a tire date code or learn about the consumer advisory.
Our goal now is to push for improvements to 15-passenger vans, to eliminate aged tires from our fleet and to keep these issues in front of the public.
But my family and our organization cannot do it alone. So, I’d like to close my testimony with a little bit of automotive history and a challenge. Forty-three years ago, almost to this very day, there was another Congressional hearing on the effectiveness of NHTSA’s programs. The hearings continued over a week in mid-July. The witnesses included executives from all of the major American automakers.
The centerpiece of Ford Motor Company’s testimony was a short movie demonstrating the crashworthiness of a 1961 Comet.
Picture – if you will – a grainy black-and-white film of a white sedan heading for a ramp. The ramp tips the passenger-side wheels and the Comet rolls over twice. The cameras inside of the car show the seat belted dummies in the front, bounced by the crash forces, but otherwise, unharmed. When the Comet comes to rest upright, the roof is intact and the dummies are still in their seats.
I’m not sure how many automakers today could show such a film to Congress. I do know that in 1965, manufacturers were on the path to building vehicles that offered significant occupant protection in rollovers. But in the absence of regulatory standards, we have strayed far from that path. We have spent decades building vehicles that were more prone to rollovers – instead of less – with weaker roofs – instead of stronger – and restraint systems that do not work in that moment when our lives depend on them.
Lexie died before she grew up and made her own way in the world. But that does not mean she cannot leave a lasting legacy. With your help, it can be one that will spare others the pain of knowing that a loved one died in a crash that they should have survived.
Despite the improvements to 15-passenger van design required by SAFETEA-LU – as of July 2006 – there were still more than half-a million 15-passenger vans on our roads. These vans are not equipped with the latest safety features. In fact they are based on 30-year-old technology. And they are being used by schools, churches and day care centers to transport our elderly, our children, our athletes and our choirs. It is not enough to launch another education and awareness campaign. These messages work their way slowly into the public’s consciousness. Consider that NHTSA had already issued three consumer advisories warning the public about the dangers of 15-passenger vans, when Lexie died in one.
My challenge to industry is this: help send these older and very dangerous vehicles to the scrap yard. Fifteen-passenger vans are the only vehicles in our fleet that cannot be used safely as intended. That irony would be merely absurd, if the consequences of it weren’t so tragic. Automakers should work to offer financial incentives to the community groups that need their vans, but lack the resources to replace them with safer transportation.
As for the regulators – NHTSA, and their overseerers, the honorable members of Congress, we ask you to conduct a national survey on tire age in 15-passenger vans and warn consumers about this fatal combination. Ultimately, we’d like to see expiration dates clearly printed on the outside sidewall of every passenger vehicle tire or the use of current technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to ensure a quick and easy read of a tire’s age.
I urge you to get to work on a standard for a dynamic rollover occupant protection test. NHTSA is absolutely right to approach each rollover-related rulemaking as a part of a system. But the system is still missing a critical element – how will the driver and the passengers actually fare in a rollover? We need a standard that requires instrumented dummies to measure what happens to people in rollovers– not just metal and glass. What good is it to test one side of the roof with a metal plate, if the front seat passenger’s head is going to be crushed in a crash along with the B-pillar? We need to know that the seat belts and whatever anchors them in a vehicle are going to withstand the impacts of a rollover – so that the 10-year-old girl in that seatbelt is going to withstand it, too. If we don’t seek the answers to these questions, then what, exactly, are we accomplishing?
Manufacturers have resisted a dynamic rollover testing standard for decades. It can’t be done, they say. And NTSHA has retreated. But if Ford can showcase its rollover testing to Congress in 1965; if GM could parade its 10-million-dollar rollover testing center two years ago for the television cameras, then it can be done. In fact, manufacturers are doing it and have been doing it. And instead of fighting a standard, they should be supporting it and offering the agency the benefits of their years of such testing.
I know that protecting people in rollover crashes is a complex challenge, but Americans are actually good at solving complex problems. Sometimes, I think we forget that. We are up to the challenge. It’s time to do the right thing – for Lexie. For all of us.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee.
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