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The statue of Justice atop the U.S. Supreme Court wears a blindfold. 

No one would drive a car in that condition. 

However, when it comes to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for sideview mirrors, the U.S. government agency in charge of auto safety is not only blind, but also oblivious to the simplest and easiest method readily available to reduce highway carnage.  And Detroit, as usual, is equally incompetent, acquiescing to a system that it knows is unsafe.

Most freeway collisions are caused by a lane change into an occupied lane or rear ending a car while looking back to determine if an adjacent lane is open. 

Preventing many of these collisions, and in many cases resulting rollovers, is simple.  Set sideview mirrors to the blind spot and only use the interior mirror for a view to the rear.  That is the practice followed by racecar drivers, savvy traffic officers and professional truckers, crash reconstructionists and anyone who studies highway accidents, deaths and injuries. 

On the other hand the Federal Safety Standard for outside mirrors assumes that the sideview mirror should operate as a rearview mirror and be set to see traffic behind the vehicle.  Not only is that a tragic mistake, it is truly dumb.

The standard reads like it was written by one of those "easy set-up" manuals every Santa Claus must endure on Christmas Eve.

 S5.2 Outside rearview mirror--driver's side. Field of view. Each passenger car shall have an outside mirror of unit magnification. The mirror shall provide the driver a view of a level road surface extending to the horizon from a line, perpendicular to a longitudinal plane tangent to the driver's side of the vehicle at the widest point, extending 2.4 m out from the tangent plane 10.7 m behind the driver's eyes, with the seat in the rearmost position. The line of sight may be partially obscured by rear body or fender contours. The location of the driver's eye reference points shall be those established in Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 104 (§571.104) or a nominal location appropriate for any 95th percentile male driver. [Emphasis added.]

The standard presumes side mirrors should be used to provide a rearward view back along the side of the vehicle which can be "partially obscured" by the car's body.

Designing sideview mirrors to see traffic directly behind a vehicle, eliminates the most critical viewing need: clearing the blind spot, where potential death lurks in a lane change at 75 mph.  It is far more important to see traffic in the blind spot at the side of a vehicle than to see what is behind.

Make your cars freeway safe.

The next time you are stopped for a traffic light set your side mirrors to show you cars in your blind spots.  These are vehicles that you will not be able to see in your interior rearview mirror.

Once on a freeway with your adjusted mirrors, follow this procedure when making a lane change and put yourself in that top category of professional drivers, just like Scott Dixon, Mario Andretti, Ed Carpenter, A. J. Foyt, Victor Meira and Graham Rahal, who use this same procedure to avoid lane change crashes:  

1.  Turn signal.

2.  Check rearview mirror for advancing traffic.

3.  A momentary shift of your eyes to the sideview mirror instantly will tell you if there is a car in your blind spot.

4.  Make sure traffic is safely ahead so you can avoid an unexpected emergency.

5.  In tight traffic, shift your foot above the brake pedal, just in case you need to brake for an emergency. 

6.  Now reconfirm your blind spot is free for your lane change.

This procedure gives you a substantial safety advantage because it minimizes your "look back" time.  

Many people look back as long as 2 to 3 seconds and ignore traffic developments ahead of them.  

Next time you are a passenger check it out.  Silently count the seconds a driver devotes to looking back over their shoulder and remember at 70 mph you are traveling 105 feet a second.  In two seconds you have covered two-thirds of a football field.  Warning: this can be a frightening experience.

The Federal Safety Standard for Sideview Mirrors should be changed, as well as the way we teach new drivers, especially teenagers, to adjust and use their mirrors to avoid lane change collisions and rollovers.

The current "safety" regulation induces collisions that easily could be avoided.  In addition to rear end collisions, SUV rollovers commnly occur as a result of last minute attempts by drivers to swerve when making a lane change to avoid a crash.   The abrupt swerve of a poorly designed, top-heavy vehicle is a design trap waiting to ensnare the innocent.   And while SUVs are losing the luster as the vehicle of choice because of the high cost of gas, they will continue to be with us for years simply because on the huge numbers of vehicles purchased in the past.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must revise the current unsafe standard.  No driver should be taught to set mirrors to avoid a direct view at blind spots.  As for the government's apparent disabilities, we can only call attention to them and hope they remedy the problem.  All they have to do is take off the blinders to see danger lurking in the blind spot.

Onward,

Richard Alexander

Two members of the Tongan Royal Family, visiting the San Francisco area to discuss political reforms in their tiny South Pacific nation, stepped into a Ford Explorer for a short ride to a meeting with the Tongan community. Instead, because of decisions made by Ford executives, the Explorer gave the royals a ride to their deaths.

A teenage driver in a 1998 Ford Mustang on U.S. 101 in Menlo Park, California cut off the 1998 Explorer in which Prince Uluvala Tu'ipelehake and Princess Kaimana Tu'ipelehake were passengers.  The Mustang was going no more than 10 miles hour faster than the Explorer when it moved left into the Explorer's lane and struck the bumper.  The Explorer swerved to the right, and the driver over-corrected, causing the Explorer to trip and roll, killing both passengers and their driver. 

The teen driver, Edith Delgado, was found guilty of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, and was sentenced to two years in county jail, but the Explorer was the real culprit. 

Ford executives deserve jail time for the deaths of the Tongan visitors and the deaths of hundreds of others whose fates were sealed in Explorers.

Delgado cut off the Explorer and caused it to make a swerve to the right.  Then, as expected, the driver lost control of the Explorer when she jerked the wheel back to the left and the Explorer did what it was designed to do. It rolled on a flat level road. 

The real proof of the Explorer's instability is Delgado's Mustang. 

The Mustang suffered minor damage.  I bought it and had it driven to my warehouse for storage as evidence in the lawsuit I filed against Ford on behalf of the Prince's two sons.

Ford's management knew that the Explorer would roll and kill people when they first marketed it in 1990. The Explorer was a replacement for the equally dangerous Bronco II, and Ford's decision to sell a new model that was certain to cause deaths and horrific injuries continued a pattern of behavior that went back at least 20 years to the Pinto and its exploding gas tank.

Ford engineers told management the Explorer was unstable and had major handling flaws long before the first Explorer came off the assembly line, but Ford's decision makers smelled big profits from the "First Mover" market position that the Explorer would give them.

As the executives hoped, they made their huge profits. As expected, Explorers rolled, people died, and continue to die.

In California alone, from 1990 to 2000, the Explorer earned Ford more than $2 billion in profits, and Dr. Alan Goedde, an expert witness, calculated the First Mover portion of the profits at between $383 million and $442 million.

Rollover problems began with the Explorer as soon as it hit the streets. Its center of gravity was too high and its wheelbase was too narrow. Every extra passenger raised the center of gravity even higher, making the vehicle even more unstable and the roof was not nearly strong enough to protect passengers when rollovers did occur.

Defective Firestone tires were a major contributing factor in many Explorer rollovers. Those tires frequently separated and caused Explorers to spin wildly out of control.  Disintegrating tires caused severe personal injuries and deaths, but when Ford became aware of problems with tires, it approved replacement tires from other manufacturers that made the Explorer even more dangerous.

Knowing the risks that the Explorer presented, Ford never slowed its marketing efforts. Suburban housewives and city residents who thought they were driving the equivalent of a station wagon were placing their families in trucks that didn't meet federal automobile safety standards.  And when evidence showed that Explorers were killing and maiming people, Ford sent out its lawyers and PR people to attempt to cover up its misdeeds.

Despite all the deaths, injuries, and lawsuits, the Explorer is still on on a roll - literally. In government tests on the 2008 Explorer, it received only a 3 (of a possible 5) in rollover safety. 

Henry Ford wouldn't be happy with the profits-before-lives approach that his company has taken. Mr. Ford was a pacifist who once faced a lawsuit from his own shareholders because he was more interested in the welfare of his workers than in maximizing his profits.

Henry Ford was a socially responsible manager with a conscience.  We know what Henry would say about the Explorer if he were alive today.  Too bad his conscience is no longer at the helm.

Onward.

Richard Alexander