My family and friends are accustomed to the constant level of vigilance I maintain regarding things that can harm us. That is a very nice way of saying I am a ____ (fill in your own word).
When I see a floor mat that is out of place, I put it back. Water on a floor? I go hunting for paper towels. And don’t even think of getting into my car without a seat belt. Does my paranoia make a difference? Well, I am fairly sure my superstitious practice of patting the side of an airplane twice does nothing to improve its airworthiness, but it has worked every time so far!
Why am I so on guard? There are two reasons. First, in my business, I see the wreckage of human misbehavior on a regular basis. Bad drivers, defective products, inattentive store owners, dangerous doctors, and the list goes on and on. My business can be discouraging, as my clients are suffering from the damage done by others. It comforts me to know I make a difference in the lives of victims by helping them obtain compensation for their injuries.
The other reason I am so attentive to safety is that our government does such a poor job of protecting us. The FDA, FAA, NTSB, CPSC, OSHA and all the other amalgamations of letters that represent governmental agencies charged with keeping you safe do a miserable job of preventing injuries.
But, every once in a while, a government agency does something right. From the Wall Street Journal Online (web link available at the following:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123850960193973809.html) on March 31, 2009 at 10:49 am EST:
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WASHINGTON — The Consumer Product Safety Commission said Yamaha Motor Co.’s U.S. sales arm has agreed to suspend sales of its Rhino 450 and 660 off-road recreational vehicles, and to offer free modifications to vehicles already in service that would make the vehicles less prone to rollover accidents.
The CPSC, in a statement, said owners of the affected Yamaha Rhino vehicles should immediately stop using them until the repairs are made.
The CPSC statement said the agency’s staff has investigated more than 50 incidents involving 46 driver and passenger deaths in these two Rhino models. The agency said “more than two-thirds of the cases involved rollovers and many involved unbelted occupants.”
Many of the accidents “involve turns at relatively low speeds and on level terrain,” the agency said. About 120,000 of the affected Rhino models have been distributed nationwide since the fall of 2003, the agency said.
The CPSC said Yamaha will install a spacer on the rear wheels and remove a rear antisway bar to help reduce the chance of rollover. The company will also continue to install half doors and additional passenger handholds on vehicles that don’t currently have those features.
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Hallelujah! The CPSC finally gets Yamaha to take two of its rollover-prone ATVs off the market. Of course, it only took “50 incidents involving 46 driver and passenger deaths” to get them to act. This is a classic case of “too little too late.” The government should ban all four-wheelers. They are unstable at all but the lowest of speeds, and people who ride them never want to go slow.
You know what I’m thinking? If there were 46 people whose deaths have been reported, there are others whose deaths have not yet come to light. And if this many people have died, there are hundreds who have been injured. Why didn’t the government act sooner? How must the family of the 46th victim feel, knowing there were 45 deaths before their loved one was killed in a rollover accident?
For that matter, why didn’t Yamaha act sooner? Why do big companies need a governmental agency to tell them to stop killing people?
My guess, and this is an educated guess, is that Yamaha made the decision to go along with the CPRC-requested recall for economic reasons. They probably figured the cost of doing business in these ATVs was too high. What caused the cost of killing people to be so high? Lawsuits. If Yamaha did not have plaintiff lawyers breathing down their necks, taking them to court and making them pay for their dangerous four-wheelers, do you think they would have yielded to pressure from the government?
The next time you hear some politician rail on against trial lawyers, ask him about the 46 victims of the Yamaha Rhino. How many more victims would there be if Yamaha did not fear the judgment of a court and jury? When you hear politicians talk about “tort reform,” what they are really advocating is closing the courthouse door in the faces of victims like the 46 families whose lives have been upended by an unstable ATV, a corporation that put profits about safety, and a government too feckless to stop them.
Steve Waldman – swaldman@gwlawyers.com
