Over the years, we have been fortunate enough to see our efforts pay off in terms of auto safety. We think it is clear that certain safety improvements have resulted directly from the information brought to light by auto safety lawsuits which are often covered by the media, from imposing the costs of particularly dangerous designs on the manufacturer that chooses to use them, and on the safety research that has been motivated by, and often paid for by, representatives of injured consumers. One example: the great improvement in Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) rollover resistance.
In the 1970's Utility Vehicles became popular for the first time, but several of the most popular were astonishingly prone to rollover – some rolling over while cornering at speeds as low as 22 mph. Rollover dangers were identified by both University and consumer protection researchers, and the danger was exposed by lawyers for consumers injured by these unnecessarily tipsy vehicles. By the mid 1980's, the worst of these were replaced by similar models with greatly improved rollover resistance. Still, some manufacturers continued to market vehicles that looked more stable, but still had dangerous rollover instability. These vehicles were prone to rollover in the event the driver needed to make an emergency steer, such as to avoid a vehicle suddenly changing lanes, an animal, an object in the roadway, or even a child. Lawsuits in the 1980's and 1990's helped not only expose these risks, especially in Ford Bronco IIs and Explorers (especially pre-2002), Toyota 4Runners (especially pre-1996), Mitsubishi Monteros, and Isuzu SUVs, but also helped to identify the solutions, including making the vehicles slightly lower and slightly wider. Lawsuits also helped in the development of test methods for discriminating among more and less stable vehicles. This publicity led to government research, and a government star rating system for rollover stability. As a result, in recent years many models of SUVs have been designed (or re-designed) with stability in mind, providing much greater rollover resistance even in accident avoidance situations where strong steering is required.
