Tragic Indifference : One Man's Battle with the Auto Industry over the Dangers of SUVs

by Penenberg, Adam L.

• ISBN13: 9780060090586
• ISBN10: 0060090588
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-23
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

<p><i>Tragic Indifference</i> is the gut-wrenching account of the biggest product liability case in history: the Ford-Firestone fiasco, where delaminating Firestone tires caused Ford Explorers to lose control and crash at highway speeds. The result was a massive recall, consumer panic, and congressional hearings. It all culminated in a lawsuit that would become a watershed for all future auto safety lawsuits.</p><p>In February 2000, reports began to surface of an alarming number of rollover cases involving Ford Explorers traveling on Firestone's Wilderness AT tire. As the stories drove a national frenzy of news coverage, no one seemed to know what was causing the devastation. Until one lawyer, who had been campaigning for years to get Ford to acknowledge the dangerous flaws in the design of the Explorer -- an engineering flaw greatly exacerbated by the use of Firestone's tires -- stepped forward to demand that Ford executives take responsibility for the lethal design of their trucks.</p><p>More than a courtroom drama, <i>Tragic Indifference</i> reveals the web of individual stories beneath the national headlines. Weaving together harrowing depictions of the accidents and their consequences with the stories of the men and women who labor to police the auto industry and its reckless cost-cutting, <i>Tragic Indifference</i> will transform the way you view the government, the courts, and the media. Above all, this book shows the price the public pays in wrecked and mangled lives when companies focus more on shaving costs than making quality products.</p><p>At the center of the story is Tab Turner, a charismatic trial attorney from Arkansas, who has made a career out of forcing Ford and other automakers to own up to their unsafe practices and to admit that they knowingly trade human lives for profits. Given the almost complete lack of government regulation over the auto industry, Turner has become, in essence, the court of last resort for victims of callous auto companies.</p><p><i>Tragic Indifference</i> also recounts the struggles of Turner's client Donna Bailey, a single mother and outdoor enthusiast who led troubled teens on backpacking trips, as she fought back from the brink of death to confront those ultimately responsible for her accident. Her case became a benchmark for all others that followed.</p>

Author Biography

Adam L. Penenberg is a well-known investigative journalist who has written for the New York Times, Forbes, Wired, Inside, Playboy, and Mother Jones. He garnered national attention in 1998 for exposing a fabricated New Republic story on hacker crime by Stephen Glass, which is portrayed in the movie Shattered Glass.

Table of Contents

AUTHOR'S NOTE	ix
PROLOGUE	1	(7)
INTRODUCTION	8	(6)
1. Blood Highway	14	(7)
2. Bronco Buster	21	(11)
3. Paper Chaser	32	(9)
4. $25 Million Verdict	41	(8)
5. The Explorer Club	49	(6)
6. KHOU-TV	55	(8)
7. Broadcast News	63	(7)
8. Speed Bump	70	(14)
9. Chain of Custody	84	(7)
10. Angels in the ICU	91	(5)
11. Slow Leak	96	(13)
12. Faith	109	(5)
13. Tire Sleuth	114	(9)
14. The War Room	123	(8)
15. Recall	131	(6)
16. Media Maven	137	(6)
17. The Whistle-blower	143	(17)
18. Safety Triumvirate	160	(18)
19. Crisis	178	(12)
20. Gag	190	(13)
21. Death by a Thousand Stab Wounds	203	(18)
22. Moses	221	(12)
23. Help Wanted	233	(8)
24. Crash Test Human	241	(5)
25. Sip and Puff	246	(7)
26. Fee Fight	253	(6)
27. Forward Fast	259	(4)
28. Driver Error	263	(10)
29. 'X'	273	(3)
30. Ghosts in the Machines	276	(6)
31. Terms of Surrender	282	(5)
32. Seven-Percent Solution	287	(5)
33. The Letter	292	(5)
EPILOGUE	297	(3)
NOTES	300	(29)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	329	(2)
INDEX	331

Excerpts

Tragic Indifference
One Man's Battle with the Auto Industry over the Dangers of SUVs

Chapter One

Blood Highway

Tara Cox and Donna Bailey were driving through central Texasin a blue two-door Ford Explorer. It was late afternoon on March 10, 2000,T-shirt and shorts weather, and the two friends were on their way toEnchanted Rock, a popular climbing and hiking destination north ofAustin. There they planned to pitch camp before dusk and spend Saturdayand Sunday rock climbing. In the backseat was Kevin McCord, a 25-year-oldclassmate of Bailey's at Texas A&M, where she studied kinesiology (thestudy of how the body moves) and he, architecture. Their gear -- tents,backpacks, climbing ropes, petons and cook stove -- was crammed in theback of the cabin. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a stethoscopethat Tara, a trained paramedic, never left home without.

A billion years old, Enchanted Rock is one of the oldest exposed rocksin North America and the geologic center of Texas. After a vertiginousclimb of several hundred feet, the gargantuan granite dome offers breath-taking views of the surrounding hill country. Donna and Tara had climbedit a dozen times together. This was the best time of year to go, before it gottoo hot. Although vultures floated above in lazy circles, the only hazardthey expected once they got there, besides gravity, was rattlesnakes. Thesethey figured they could handle.

Tara, five feet two inches, a well-knit redhead in her early 30s, andDonna, 10 years older, blond and seven inches taller, had gone on numeroushiking and climbing trips together, as well as canoeing, kayaking and(on girls' night out) dancing. Life was a triathlon. It was as if they couldn'tstop moving. Even their conversation was nonstop, usually slipping intotheir favorite topic, what they liked to call "smut talk" -- an unvarnished discussion of sex.

They were as different as they were similar. Donna was a divorcedmother of two living on food stamps who recently moved in with hermother. Despite this she had never been happier. She married young andwas now just coming into her own. She went back to school and was workingtoward her degree. A people-person who spoke her mind, she had littletrouble attracting men. She took great pride in her appearance and alwaysbrought makeup and a blow dryer on camping trips, playfully boasting shecould find an outlet anywhere.

Tara, who was more self-contained, bordering on shy, also had twokids. A former high school athletic star, she lived in jeans and T-shirts andwas more comfortable around animals, symbolized by tattoos of a raven onher shoulder, partially obscured by her long red hair, and a horse inked toher ankle. Theirs was a friendship cemented by a love of sports and theoutdoors. They both worked at Youth Odyssey, a Corpus Christi nonprofitorganization founded by Kim Cox, Tara's husband, that took troubled teenson hiking and climbing trips, to teach them the pressures that defined theirlives (money, clothes, status and ethnicity) counted for very little in nature.

Kim Cox had purchased the 1997 Explorer used at the Ford dealershipin Corpus Christi. It came equipped with Firestone AT Wilderness tires,which Tara got checked at Jiffy Lube whenever they planned a long trip.The Coxes had put 50,000 miles on the car in the year and a half theyowned it. Unlike 89 percent of SUV owners who never venture from pavement,Tara took the Explorer off road on several occasions, often withDonna.

The sun beat down on the Explorer as Corpus Christi suburbs gaveway to wide-open Texas desert. The tires hummed against the pavement.Inside Donna, Tara and Kevin traveled in cushy comfort. Tara set thecruise control to 70 mph as they headed north on Route 181, past dustytowns like Paplote, Beeville, Tuleta and Hobson. While Donna and Tarawere strapped in the front, Kevin sat in the back without a seatbelt, nudgingforward to participate in the conversation, which, punctuated withsqueals of laughter, had turned bawdy. The three of them were having somuch fun they didn't even bother turning on the radio.

They were on the road about two hours when the trouble started.Although they couldn't have known it the 15-inch right rear Firestone tirehad begun to peel apart. A separation developed around the tire's shoulder.Every minute the SUV was in motion the two layers of rubber rubbedtogether. In some areas the rubber was completely worn through. Twentymiles outside of San Antonio, Donna and her friends had just passed a signwarning of a bridge coming up when the tread snapped away from the tire.

Suddenly an explosion from outside the cabin seemed to rock theExplorer. The car jerked hard to the right. Tara struggled to stay on the roadby turning the wheel left and hitting the brakes, but the Explorer had plansof its own. Tires screeching, the back end fishtailed, skidding out of control.Tara spun the wheel the other way and the rear responded by comingaround as they continued to skid in a 180-degree turn. But she was stillunable to gain control.

The Explorer slid into the left lane and its rear end went off the shoulderand into a ditch. "Hold on!" Tara called out as the car flipped into theair, cartwheeling end over end. The Explorer twisted upside down inmidair and 3,000 pounds of SUV pounded down on the ground, crushingin the passenger's side roof. Because of the 10 inches of slack in her safetybelt, Donna's head was propped against the top of the car. The forcesnapped her neck and she was blinded by white light as a sharp pain joltedthrough her spine. The Explorer spun sideways, rolled over one-and-a-halfmore times and careened into a chain-link fence ...

Tragic Indifference
One Man's Battle with the Auto Industry over the Dangers of SUVs. Copyright © by Adam Penenberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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