RCSignals
01-26-2004, 11:55 PM
http://thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=6797&sid=175&n=156
Numbers Don’t Damn Crown Vic
The controversy over burning cop cars has overwhelmed the facts.
by Mike Davis (2004-01-26)
From the dawn of mankind, the force of nature we have feared most is fire.
Sometimes, though, one has to wonder if there aren't those who'd like to fan the flames to turn the spark into a conflagration. As we've watched so much seemingly damning media coverage of fires involving the Ford Crown Vic emerge in recent months, TheCarConnection felt it critical to keep a cool head and take a closer look at the statistics and the full story.
Is the Crown Vic matter really a case of a callous - or perhaps incompetent - automaker, or one of greedy plaintiffs attorneys smelling smoke, or something in between?
Complex problem
This is a complicated subject, and you'll have to bear with me as I take you through what I believe to be the significant aspects for car enthusiasts. By the way, all of the following, and much more, can be found by laboriously surfing the Web.
The issue in the attack on Ford Crown Victoria - specifically the Police Interceptor (CVPI) and generally all of Ford's "Panther" cars - is placement of the fuel tank. It's between the rear wheels and the frame rails, forward of the deep trunk compartment and spare tire, and aft of the rear axle. Critics say it should be "moved" to the front of the axle, i.e., into the passenger compartment, ignoring the driveshaft in the center that moves up and down with the solid rear axle.
We'll get to all the numbers later, but basically an almost freak series of three highly publicized deaths in fires from high-speed rear impacts to Ford police cars took place in Arizona in a relatively short time. Local and state authorities naturally wondered if there was a fixable flaw in these cars, something they could do to answer local critics. Coincidentally, the Arizona attorney general was running for governor and chose to make a campaign issue out of CVPI safety.
As a result, Ford experts sat down with a panel of police experts from around the country to find solutions to both real and perceived problems with the cars. Ford also had issued several Technical Service Bulletins over the years for some fixes believed to reduce the chance of fuel tank puncture. Out of the meetings came a series of other recommendations to state legislators and police agencies. Several states now have passed laws requiring motorists to give wide berths to parked highway police cars.
The panel also found that police, especially highway patrolmen, tend to carry a lot of equipment in their trunks, which if unwisely stored can make bad rear-enders worse. In one particular case, a crowbar being carried in fore-and-aft position punctured a CVPI gas tank in a "mere" 40-mph rear crash. So not only did Ford issue a bulletin to police agencies advising them to mount equipment carefully, it also developed a heavy-duty plastic equipment holder to fit in the trunk, in which to mount the typical stuff cops carry.
The case before Ford
Let's get back to the real case against the CVPI alleging a safety defect because of a seemingly high number of anecdotes concerning police and civilian car rear-impact fire-fatalities. There are several questions that have to be answered calmly and this is precisely what the Office of Defect Investigations (ODI) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) undertook to find out in an eleven-month study released late in 2002.
To put things in overall perspective, in a separate report in 2003, NHTSA announced there were 42,815 traffic crash fatalities in 2002, including 37,232 vehicle occupants. Of the 58,113 fatal vehicle crashes, only 1710 or 2.9 percent, involved fire occurrence. But that does NOT mean fire caused the fatality only that fire was involved. The fatality might have been from impact or from ejection, for example. Or the victim even could have been a bystander.
According to the NHTSA report (which you can download if you want to wade through it yourself), there were only 17,000 crash fires among more than ELEVEN MILLION reported crashes last year.
Thus, despite what you may been led to believe, crash fires are rare, and fatal fire crashes even rarer. But when they do happen, they get a lot of media attention. This is especially true if the vehicles involved are police cars.
Sole patrol
As Ford CVPIs evolved to become virtually the only police cars on the road after GM ended production of the rear-drive Caprice in 1996, any accidents involving PD cars almost inevitably were Fords.
Panther was the code-name for the "downsized" full-sized family of rear-drive frame-chassis Ford Motor Co. sedans introduced as 1979 Ford and Mercury and 1980 Lincoln models. They've been updated in various forms, most recently for 2002-03. NHTSA decided to look at the 1992-2001 population of 3,129,000 Panthers, including about 450,00 CVPIs, because they constituted the then-current design of most police cars on which comparable records could be obtained.
Drawing on the exhaustive Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) from police accident reports - as well as input from state highway patrols, plaintiff lawyers and their associates, consumers, Ford Motor, and its own field investigations - the ODI identified only 26 reports of high-energy "Post Rear End Collision Fires" in Panthers from September 1992 to August 2002. Of these, 22 were in police cars and the other four in civilian use, with 16 fatalities total from "thermal injuries."
Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety (CAS) - which is closely allied with the plaintiff bar - challenged the ODI numbers, claiming 102 Panther fire fatalities in 83 crashes. But the CAS listing apparently included ALL fire-fatals they could find involving Panthers, not just police cars. Further, it included crashes in which there were fires NOT originating in the Ford vehicles, and crashes that were not rear impacts.
One example on the CAS list was a CVPI that T-boned a Daihatsu Charade at high speed, in which the latter caught fire - but its driver was killed from being ejected.
In another case, a CVPI was pursuing two suspects in a Firebird down the wrong way of a divided highway. The Firebird sideswiped an oncoming tractor-trailer, then was struck head-on by a Chevrolet Caprice police car coming the opposite direction. The Chevy rolled over and slid sideways into the CVPI's front. The impacts of these horrendous collisions killed all four occupants; the Firebird and the Chevy caught fire, and the latter's flames burned the FRONT of the CVPI but it neither caught fire internally nor was its fuel tank involved.
Numbers and perception
Even if you accept the dubious high numbers from CAS, though, they are still tiny compared to the millions of Panther cars driven millions of miles over many years. And when you zoom down on police cars, you are looking at vehicles driven 24/7 with particular exposure by highway patrol units parked on the road or roadside - behind violators, accidents or construction sites - right in the path of high-speed vehicles. The California Highway Patrol told the ODI it averaged one rear-impact collision per week resulting in the "totalling" of the CHP vehicle.
ODI took all this into consideration. Further, from their huge database, they compared the fire-fatality rate of 1992-2001 Panthers with GM's 1985-1996 RWD B bodies, which in those years included police units selling at about the same rate as the Fords. Chrysler had largely withdrawn from the police car market in 1989 when it folded its RWD cars, just as GM did in 1996.
The upshot was that the Panthers and the GM B's had more or less comparable fatals-from-fires, 21 fires out of 267 fatal crashes for Panther and 12 fires out of 190 fatal crashes for the B's. After the CAS squawked again, ODI examined crashes of all sedans in the FARS database and found the "ratio of fires in fatal vehicles per total fatal vehicles yields a ratio (including police vehicles) of 0.033 for both Ford Panther and all other sedans." Moreover, if police units were excluded, the Panther had a ratio of 0.029, or lower than all other sedans.
The ODI concluded that Panther vehicles had no safety defect and were actually as safe or safer than other vehicles in high-energy rear crashes. According to a statement from Ford, NHTSA records show there are 18 other comparable vehicle models with higher fire-fatality rates than the Panther since 1980.
I've only touched on the highlights of the ODI report. You should read it yourself atwww.nhtsa.dot.gov/current/crownvic/index.htm
Police officers in parked Crown Vics have survived rear-end crashes which crushed the cars to forward of the B-pillar, at impact speeds of 55 to as much as 115 mph, from bullet vehicles ranging from Hondas to 18-wheelers. The NHTSA/ODI study demonstrates convincingly *- at least to me - that Panthers arguably could be the safest cars on the road.
Nevertheless, Ford has announced that 2005 CVPI units will incorporate a new fire suppression device to enhance safety in high-energy rear impacts. There is, of course, no such thing as absolute safety. There is no fuel tank position in a vehicle that can be protected in a crash that crushes the vehicle. In-tank fuel bladders, hawked by some because of race-car usage, simply don't have the durability and emissions compatibility required of civilian or police cars.
So don't be led down the garden path by those who substitute sensational anecdotes for sound science.
The bottom line: NOT GUILTY.
Numbers Don’t Damn Crown Vic
The controversy over burning cop cars has overwhelmed the facts.
by Mike Davis (2004-01-26)
From the dawn of mankind, the force of nature we have feared most is fire.
Sometimes, though, one has to wonder if there aren't those who'd like to fan the flames to turn the spark into a conflagration. As we've watched so much seemingly damning media coverage of fires involving the Ford Crown Vic emerge in recent months, TheCarConnection felt it critical to keep a cool head and take a closer look at the statistics and the full story.
Is the Crown Vic matter really a case of a callous - or perhaps incompetent - automaker, or one of greedy plaintiffs attorneys smelling smoke, or something in between?
Complex problem
This is a complicated subject, and you'll have to bear with me as I take you through what I believe to be the significant aspects for car enthusiasts. By the way, all of the following, and much more, can be found by laboriously surfing the Web.
The issue in the attack on Ford Crown Victoria - specifically the Police Interceptor (CVPI) and generally all of Ford's "Panther" cars - is placement of the fuel tank. It's between the rear wheels and the frame rails, forward of the deep trunk compartment and spare tire, and aft of the rear axle. Critics say it should be "moved" to the front of the axle, i.e., into the passenger compartment, ignoring the driveshaft in the center that moves up and down with the solid rear axle.
We'll get to all the numbers later, but basically an almost freak series of three highly publicized deaths in fires from high-speed rear impacts to Ford police cars took place in Arizona in a relatively short time. Local and state authorities naturally wondered if there was a fixable flaw in these cars, something they could do to answer local critics. Coincidentally, the Arizona attorney general was running for governor and chose to make a campaign issue out of CVPI safety.
As a result, Ford experts sat down with a panel of police experts from around the country to find solutions to both real and perceived problems with the cars. Ford also had issued several Technical Service Bulletins over the years for some fixes believed to reduce the chance of fuel tank puncture. Out of the meetings came a series of other recommendations to state legislators and police agencies. Several states now have passed laws requiring motorists to give wide berths to parked highway police cars.
The panel also found that police, especially highway patrolmen, tend to carry a lot of equipment in their trunks, which if unwisely stored can make bad rear-enders worse. In one particular case, a crowbar being carried in fore-and-aft position punctured a CVPI gas tank in a "mere" 40-mph rear crash. So not only did Ford issue a bulletin to police agencies advising them to mount equipment carefully, it also developed a heavy-duty plastic equipment holder to fit in the trunk, in which to mount the typical stuff cops carry.
The case before Ford
Let's get back to the real case against the CVPI alleging a safety defect because of a seemingly high number of anecdotes concerning police and civilian car rear-impact fire-fatalities. There are several questions that have to be answered calmly and this is precisely what the Office of Defect Investigations (ODI) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) undertook to find out in an eleven-month study released late in 2002.
To put things in overall perspective, in a separate report in 2003, NHTSA announced there were 42,815 traffic crash fatalities in 2002, including 37,232 vehicle occupants. Of the 58,113 fatal vehicle crashes, only 1710 or 2.9 percent, involved fire occurrence. But that does NOT mean fire caused the fatality only that fire was involved. The fatality might have been from impact or from ejection, for example. Or the victim even could have been a bystander.
According to the NHTSA report (which you can download if you want to wade through it yourself), there were only 17,000 crash fires among more than ELEVEN MILLION reported crashes last year.
Thus, despite what you may been led to believe, crash fires are rare, and fatal fire crashes even rarer. But when they do happen, they get a lot of media attention. This is especially true if the vehicles involved are police cars.
Sole patrol
As Ford CVPIs evolved to become virtually the only police cars on the road after GM ended production of the rear-drive Caprice in 1996, any accidents involving PD cars almost inevitably were Fords.
Panther was the code-name for the "downsized" full-sized family of rear-drive frame-chassis Ford Motor Co. sedans introduced as 1979 Ford and Mercury and 1980 Lincoln models. They've been updated in various forms, most recently for 2002-03. NHTSA decided to look at the 1992-2001 population of 3,129,000 Panthers, including about 450,00 CVPIs, because they constituted the then-current design of most police cars on which comparable records could be obtained.
Drawing on the exhaustive Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) from police accident reports - as well as input from state highway patrols, plaintiff lawyers and their associates, consumers, Ford Motor, and its own field investigations - the ODI identified only 26 reports of high-energy "Post Rear End Collision Fires" in Panthers from September 1992 to August 2002. Of these, 22 were in police cars and the other four in civilian use, with 16 fatalities total from "thermal injuries."
Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety (CAS) - which is closely allied with the plaintiff bar - challenged the ODI numbers, claiming 102 Panther fire fatalities in 83 crashes. But the CAS listing apparently included ALL fire-fatals they could find involving Panthers, not just police cars. Further, it included crashes in which there were fires NOT originating in the Ford vehicles, and crashes that were not rear impacts.
One example on the CAS list was a CVPI that T-boned a Daihatsu Charade at high speed, in which the latter caught fire - but its driver was killed from being ejected.
In another case, a CVPI was pursuing two suspects in a Firebird down the wrong way of a divided highway. The Firebird sideswiped an oncoming tractor-trailer, then was struck head-on by a Chevrolet Caprice police car coming the opposite direction. The Chevy rolled over and slid sideways into the CVPI's front. The impacts of these horrendous collisions killed all four occupants; the Firebird and the Chevy caught fire, and the latter's flames burned the FRONT of the CVPI but it neither caught fire internally nor was its fuel tank involved.
Numbers and perception
Even if you accept the dubious high numbers from CAS, though, they are still tiny compared to the millions of Panther cars driven millions of miles over many years. And when you zoom down on police cars, you are looking at vehicles driven 24/7 with particular exposure by highway patrol units parked on the road or roadside - behind violators, accidents or construction sites - right in the path of high-speed vehicles. The California Highway Patrol told the ODI it averaged one rear-impact collision per week resulting in the "totalling" of the CHP vehicle.
ODI took all this into consideration. Further, from their huge database, they compared the fire-fatality rate of 1992-2001 Panthers with GM's 1985-1996 RWD B bodies, which in those years included police units selling at about the same rate as the Fords. Chrysler had largely withdrawn from the police car market in 1989 when it folded its RWD cars, just as GM did in 1996.
The upshot was that the Panthers and the GM B's had more or less comparable fatals-from-fires, 21 fires out of 267 fatal crashes for Panther and 12 fires out of 190 fatal crashes for the B's. After the CAS squawked again, ODI examined crashes of all sedans in the FARS database and found the "ratio of fires in fatal vehicles per total fatal vehicles yields a ratio (including police vehicles) of 0.033 for both Ford Panther and all other sedans." Moreover, if police units were excluded, the Panther had a ratio of 0.029, or lower than all other sedans.
The ODI concluded that Panther vehicles had no safety defect and were actually as safe or safer than other vehicles in high-energy rear crashes. According to a statement from Ford, NHTSA records show there are 18 other comparable vehicle models with higher fire-fatality rates than the Panther since 1980.
I've only touched on the highlights of the ODI report. You should read it yourself atwww.nhtsa.dot.gov/current/crownvic/index.htm
Police officers in parked Crown Vics have survived rear-end crashes which crushed the cars to forward of the B-pillar, at impact speeds of 55 to as much as 115 mph, from bullet vehicles ranging from Hondas to 18-wheelers. The NHTSA/ODI study demonstrates convincingly *- at least to me - that Panthers arguably could be the safest cars on the road.
Nevertheless, Ford has announced that 2005 CVPI units will incorporate a new fire suppression device to enhance safety in high-energy rear impacts. There is, of course, no such thing as absolute safety. There is no fuel tank position in a vehicle that can be protected in a crash that crushes the vehicle. In-tank fuel bladders, hawked by some because of race-car usage, simply don't have the durability and emissions compatibility required of civilian or police cars.
So don't be led down the garden path by those who substitute sensational anecdotes for sound science.
The bottom line: NOT GUILTY.