Center for Auto Safety Calls for Jeep Recall
Reprinted from The Safety Record, Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C – The Center for Auto Safety has called for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate defective fuel tank design in 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees, and to recall any of the popular SUVs with a fuel tank located behind the rear axle.
CAS based its October 2 petition on FARS data showing that Grand Cherokees built prior to 2005, (when DaimlerChrysler redesigned the SUV to move the fuel tank to a more protected location) were involved in 172 fatal fire crashes resulting in 254 fatalities over a 16-year period. CAS Executive Director Clarence Ditlow says that the petition has been in the works since the spring, when the organization decided to highlight the problem against the backdrop of the Chrysler bankruptcy. At the time, the failed automaker had successfully slipped the bounds of successor liability as it was sold to Fiat. (Chrysler has since followed General Motors example and agreed to assume liability for future crashes involving products built by the old company. Crashes that occurred before the bankruptcy are only liable to the old company.)
Ditlow compared this petition to the organization’s 1992 defect and recall petition over fuel tank fires in the General Motors CK pickup trucks with the side-saddle tanks mounted outside the frame rails. An agency investigation showed that the CK was over-involved in side-impact fuel tank fires and that the design of the system was to blame. (Despite this finding, under an intense political campaign by the GM, Ford and Chrysler, the agency closed its investigation, and allowed GM to skip the recall in exchange for a vague $51 million commitment to safety programs.)
“You know there are fires and you know there are lawsuits, but no one has ever connected the dots. We just decided to look into it and see how bad it was and it came up vey bad,” Ditlow said. “In the context of the bankruptcy, we wanted to show what might happen with a common defect and this was one everybody could understand.”
Jeeps and fire hazards are nothing new. In August, NHTSA launched an investigation into the possibility that 2007 and 2008 Jeep Wranglers with automatic transmissions may burst into flames –apparently due to the transmission overheating and leaking transmission fluid. After the Office of Defect investigations opened a probe into dashboard fires, Chrysler recalled about 150,000 2006 Jeep Liberty vehicles in March 2007. The automaker said that 12 reports of interior fires that might have been related to a malfunction of the HVAC blower. In 2002, Daimler Chrysler recalled nearly 72,000 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokees because the design of the intake and exhaust manifolds could allow debris to accumulate near the number 3 cylinder, and ignite in a vehicle fire. In 2000, Chrysler recalled 1500 Grand Cherokees with suspect vent tube welds, which could lead to a fuel leak and fire.
But the Jeep has been a standout for its antediluvian design, in which the fuel tank is located behind the rear axle – right in the crush zone of a rear-impact collision. The Center also notes that the plastic fuel tank can rupture and degrade over time, that the fuel filler neck tears off in a range of crashes and that the tank is surrounded by “sharp objects such as suspension bolts that can puncture the tank.” Chrysler does give consumers the option of thwarting its poor design by selling a steel shield called a “skid plate,” ostensibly for off road use.
The apex of bad fuel tank design that still lingers in the public consciousness is the Ford Pinto, which became notorious in the 1970s for fuel tank explosions, inspiring nicknames like, “The Barbeque That Seats Four.” Long after many automakers scrapped that location to better protect the tank in a crash, Chrysler’s Grand Cherokee and Liberty models sported the fiery crash-prone design, with a plastic fuel tank that extends below the rear bumper, leaving it vulnerable to a rollover or a rear collision with a vehicle with a lower front profile. And the data shows that fuel tank fires have been a problem for more than a decade.
In late September, Quality Control Systems Corp. released Model Year 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees in Fatal, Rear Impact Crashes Involving Fire, an analysis of rear-impact fatal crashes involving 1993-2004 small and mid-sized SUVs. Researchers Randy and Alice Whitfield studied a total of 480 MY 1993-1998 small utility vehicles and 1999-2004 midsize utility vehicles, where the principal impact was at 5, 6, or 7 o’clock on the rear of the vehicle. The data showed that the Jeep Grand Cherokee was a standout compared to its peers in fatal rear impact crashes in which a fire occurred.
In crashes where the principal impact was at the rear of the vehicle, the Jeep Grand Cherokees has a much higher rate of fire occurrence, at 16 percent (17 fires in 106 rear impacts) compared to all other 4.8 percent of all utility vehicles studied (18 fires in 374 rear impacts). When all of the other Jeep vehicles are excluded from the analysis, the difference grew, with a 16 percent rate compared to 3.7 percent for other comparable SUVs.
In examining a subset where the initial and the principal impact were both coded at the same rear positions, and the vehicle did not roll over in the crash, Grand Cherokees also has a much higher rate of fire occurrence, 27.3 percent (12 fires in 44 rear impacts) compared to all other utility vehicle studied, 8.7 percent (9 fires in 103 rear impacts). Since the vehicle was re-designed to protect the fuel tank, there has been only one crash involving a 2008 Grand Cherokee resulting in a fuel tank fire and deaths – in that case the occupants died from their injuries after being ejected during a rollover.
The Center believes that the agency should grant its petition because Grand Cherokee’s problems are more pronounced that the Pinto’s in 1978, when the agency issued its initial defect report. (A total of 38 fire crashes resulting in 26 deaths in the Pinto.)