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The best-selling defect in America: the Ford F-150 SuperCab is dangerous. Why is it still on the road?

Article Excerpt
On July 26, 2001, four friends were returning from a celebration in Kingsville, Texas, when tragedy struck. They were traveling in a 2000 Ford F-150 SuperCab pickup, driven by Paul Alaniz, a football coach at a local high school. Seated behind him was Laura Benavides. When they were almost home, the truck entered a curve, and one of its tires dropped off the pavement. Alaniz brought the vehicle back onto the road but then lost control.

It skidded across the roadway and began a passenger-side-leading roll on the sort shoulder on the opposite side of the road. The truck rolled a total of three times and landed on all four wheels. In the course of the rollover, the driver-side doors opened, and both Alaniz and Benavides were ejected and killed. During the crash, the passenger-side doors stayed closed, keeping the occupants on that side of the vehicle inside the cab of the truck. They walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

The evidence presented at trial showed that there were 134 similar incidents involving the ejection of occupants in fatal F-150 SuperCab accidents. (1)

Fatal design

Ford first produced the F-150 four-door SuperCab pickup in 1999. Its distinguishing feature is two full doors and two hall doors on both sides of the vehicle. The smaller half door is rear-hinged, so the doors on each side open away from the middle, like barn doors. Because of their propensity to open unintentionally, such doors have been referred to as "suicide doors." This vehicle does not have a center support, or B-pillar, between the front and rear doors allowing easy access to the SuperCab portion of the truck. The design can be contrasted with that of the Crew Cab pickup, which bas two full-size doors on each side of the cab and a B-pillar in the middle.

In the rollover that killed Alaniz and Benavides, the lack of B-pillar support allowed the roof to collapse in the middle. The downward force from the collapsing roof opened two door latches on the driver's side, creating a large ejection portal. In deposition testimony, a Ford witness admitted that two of the door latches failed in this accident. (2)

This failure mode is different from the typical roof-crush or door-latch defect. The typical roof-crush case usually involves severe head and neck injuries or death from occupant-compartment intrusion. The occupants are...

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