Warning All Groups of People

In 2003, Dora Mae Jablonski and her husband, John, a Korean War veteran, were riding in their 1993 Lincoln Town Car on I-270 when construction forced them to stop. The couple, in their 70s, were rear-ended by a car going about 60 miles per hour.

The collision forced a 14-inch pipe wrench in the couple's trunk through the walls of the trunk and punctured the fuel tank that caused a fire, leaving Dora Mae severely burned over 40 percent of her body and her husband dead. Dora Mae is confined to a wheelchair.

A lawsuit was filed against Ford Motor Co. alleging that their Town Car and three other Ford models were negligently designed and their defective fuel tank systems were dangerously placed behind the rear axle, a design long abandoned by other car manufacturers. The Town Car has the same obsolete fuel system design as the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor that has been the subject of many lawsuits filed around the country on behalf of law enforcement personnel who have been severely burned or who have died.

At trial, evidence was presented that Ford put the fuel tank in the rear crush zone, making it susceptible to crushing and causing a fire during a rear-end collision. There was evidence of 50 similar fires in vehicles with this same fuel system and 416 other fiery crashes in vehicles with the fuel tank behind the axle. Additional incidents reportedly have occurred since the trial, with hundreds of thousands of these vehicles estimated to still be on the road. Jablonski v. Ford Motor Company,  398 Ill.App.3d 222, 923 N.E.2d 347 (5th Dist. 2010).

Evidence was also introduced that Ford took the time and expense to warn police agencies and other nonpolice fleet vehicle owners of the cars' dangers. Ford offered an upgrade kit, an optional trunk pack made of a high-strength Kevlar material, trunk-packing instructions and warnings to owners of 32,000 nonpolice fleet vehicles owners and police department owners, but made no effort to warn consumers who had purchased the car.

It should be noted that Ford engineers estimated the cost of moving the tanks in 1971 to be $9.85 per vehicle, yet Ford chose to keep it behind the axle. The jury came back with a $43 million verdict. Ford appealed.

I thought about the Jablonskis as I was watching NBC's "Nightly News" with Brian Williams when he was reporting on a story about swing sets. Apparently, the Cabell County (W. Va.) Board of Education voted to remove swing sets from school yards because of injuries and potential lawsuits.

Williams concluded by saying that "the swing set safety types" are behind the effort to keep children safe. Aside from the subjective comment, the anchorman also may have inaccurately reported that it is the law that schools provide students this outdoor equipment; it was later reported in local newspapers that the law is ambiguous on the matter.

Officials there were quoted as saying that the intent of the policy is not to mandate swing sets, and that their real concern is the hard surface areas around swing sets that need to be made softer.

NBC news that night did not report on the 200,000 playground-related injuries to children age 14 and younger that are treated in emergency rooms across the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nor did Williams report that 45 percent of those injuries are considered severe - fractures, internal injuries, concussions, dislocations and amputations. Williams' comment about "safety types" was callously critical of those who advocate for improved safety.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted to hammer out specifics for a searchable database (www.SaferProducts.gov) that will allow consumers to post details when they suffer an injury or cite a potential hazard from a product. It's expected to be up and running by March.

Thousands of products - from baby strollers to power tools - will be reported online at the cost of about $20 million to develop the website.

"Consumers will no longer be operating in the dark," Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety and senior counsel at the Consumer Federation of America, told the press at the unveiling of this project. "The database will provide consumers with critical information that is not currently available."

The database is part of a 2008 product safety law and will allow the CPSC to share a complaint on a product after the manufacturer has 10 days to investigate it. Manufacturers fear that time is too short to review a complaint before it becomes public on the database. It remains to be seen if, in fact, it instead may be too long in allowing consumers to be exposed to potentially dangerous products.

As for the Jablonski case, the Illinois Supreme Court has accepted the petition for leave to appeal and will decide whether the fuel tank placement was dangerous and whether individual consumers deserved the same equipment and warnings as police and nonpolice fleet owners. If manufacturers are allowed to pick and choose those for whom it is financially worthwhile to warn of dangers, how can consumers ever be assured of the safety of any product? Perhaps the government's database will help more than it thinks, and then everyone can be a "safety type."