The Florida Highway Patrol reports that a 25 year old Orange Park Woman was heading south on Interstate 95 in Flagler County when she lost control of her 1999 Ford Explorer SUV and crashed Saturday afternoon around 3:15 p.m. Kathleen Lugo reportedly tried to pass slow traffic and when she moved to the shoulder of the road she lost control and rolled several times. Not wearing her seat belt, Lugo was ejected from the Explorer and taken to Halifax Hospital where she was pronounced dead according to the Florida Times Union.
Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyers have known about the tendency of these vehicles to roll since they hit the market in 1991. The safety of the Ford SUVs became a nationwide concern in 2000. More than 200 deaths and 700 injuries in the United States were blamed on Ford Explorers rolling over after the tread separated on Firestone tires with which the Explorers had been equipped.
In 2005, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety issued a report finding that the two-door, two-wheel drive Ford Explorer made between 1999 and 2002 had the fourth highest rate of driver death of the 47 SUVs that were part of the study. In November 2006, a jury awarded the Oklahoma family of a teenager who died in a Ford Rollover accident $15 million in a lawsuit against Ford. The jury found that the teen was killed because the Ford Explorer’s roof was too weak to withstand a rollover. In early 2006, further support that the Explorer is unstable and can flip over during sudden driving maneuvers surfaced in an Explorer rollover trial in Mississippi. Ford’s test results of replacement tires for the Explorer, introduced as evidence in the trial, indicated that the vehicle is unstable not only on Firestone tires but also on tires made by Goodyear, Michelin’s Uniroyal, Continental and other manufacturers. Ford had approved some of the failed tires as replacement brands.
