Law Alerts
TEXAS LAW ALERT — SUMMER 2006 ISSUE
SUV ROLLOVERS: A SERIOUS PROBLEM
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The perception among drivers is that bigger is better, and therefore SUVs—which are bigger than other cars—must be safer. Unfortunately, this perception is not correct. SUVs, which are not only bigger, but taller than other kinds of cars and trucks, have a disturbing tendency to roll over, which results in more serious accidents. Almost every make and model of SUVs have this problem.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, SUVs roll over at more than twice the rate of other vehicles. As a result, the government requires SUVs to bear a warning label telling drivers that they are in danger of rolling over if they make a sharp turn, which they may have to do to avoid a collision. Of course, the problem is that merely warning a driver that this is the case does nothing to change the basic bad design, and, when a driver is faced with the choice of either plowing into another car or making a potentially dangerous sharp turn, most drivers will make the turn, resulting in many rollover accidents.
SUVs tend to be taller than cars, tend to have a higher ground clearance, and tend to have a narrower distance between their wheels, all of which combine to give SUVs a higher center of gravity that makes it easier for them to tip over. The size of SUVs means that they can be (and often are) heavily loaded, and extra weight actually makes it more likely that the SUV will roll over in a crash. The fact that most people use their SUVs as a family car rather than as an off road vehicle has led most SUV manufacturers to remove roll bars from their SUVs—roll bars that would provide some protection in the event of a rollover.
Many SUV manufacturers tout the steps that they have taken to increase safety, but none of these steps involves any fundamental redesign of SUVs to make them safer. Instead, manufacturers claim that they have tested their SUVs and have found them difficult to roll over, but what they do not tell you is that these tests were conducted with lightly loaded SUVs driven by professional drivers, and the reactions of these drivers have very little to do with how an ordinary driver with three kids and a car full of groceries would react in the same situation. Also, don’t be fooled by the number of “stars” that an SUV has received—statistics show that even an SUV that has a five star crash rating still has a 10% chance of rolling over in a single vehicle crash.
The proof of the danger presented by SUV rollovers is shown in accident statistics. In the real world, rollover accidents are far more likely to result in death than are other kinds of accidents, and SUVs are involved in more rollover accidents than are other kinds of passenger vehicles. The propensity of SUVs to roll over means that while single vehicle rollover accidents accounted for only 19% of passenger deaths in cars, they caused more than half (53%) of the passenger deaths in SUVs.
Litigating SUV rollover cases can be complex and usually requires proving that a maneuver that is commonly performed by drivers and that would not have caused a car to roll over did cause the SUV to roll over, and that, after it rolled over, its design was not enough to protect the occupants from injury. This involves knowledge of not only state laws governing negligence, but also federal safety regulations and the law of corporate liability and products liability.
If you or someone you love has been involved in an SUV rollover accident, you may have a claim against the manufacturer and others for any injuries that have been suffered. Do not settle for less than what you are due. Contact our firm. We will be happy to discuss your case with you.
WHAT TO DO AFTER AN SUV ROLLOVER
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If you or someone you know has been injured in a rollover accident involving an SUV, take the following steps immediately:
* Take pictures of the location of the accident and of the roadway, showing the layout of the road and any tire marks or scrapes.
* Take pictures of the SUV and other vehicles involved in the accident. You cannot have too many photos.
* Preserve the vehicle. If the SUV is totaled, the insurer will either pay you the value and keep the SUV or pay you the value minus the salvage cost and allow you to keep the wreck. BUY THE WRECK, or else it will be lost.
* Gather important documents, including police reports, the names and contact information of witnesses, and medical bills.
INSURANCE RATES AND YOUR CREDIT SCORE
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Although insurance companies (along with everyone else) are prohibited from discriminating against their customers because of the color of their skin, their religion, and the like, many insurers are making decisions about how much to charge for insurance that result in minorities’ paying more for the same level of coverage.
In Texas and many other states, an insurer looks at an insured’s credit score to determine the amount it will charge for insurance. This practice (called “credit scoring”) is defended by the insurance industry, which claims that there is a relationship between whether or not a person has good credit and whether or not that person will make claims on his insurance. In a nutshell, the insurance companies argue that low credit = higher costs.
However, opponents of credit scoring note that, unlike most of the other factors that insurance companies consider in setting rates, such as an insured’s driving record or the number of claims made in the past, basing premiums on credit scores can result in a person who has never made any claims paying high insurance rates just because he has bad credit. The differences are not trivial: Credit scoring can result in one insured paying up to 400% more for the same coverage as another insured, just because of a low credit score.
Opponents of credit scoring also note that the practice costs minorities more to get insurance, because many minorities tend to have lower credit scores. A study of 2 million auto insurance policies in Texas showed that 90% of the drivers who had high credit scores were white, even though only 51% of the policies were issued to white drivers. Conversely, African American drivers made up 33% of the group with the lowest credit scores, even though they represented only 7% of the drivers in the study. Opponents of credit scoring also express concern that even as incomes rise, the credit scores of minorities tend to remain lower than the credit scores of equivalent white households.
Some states have moved toward banning the practice of credit scoring, most often because it is felt that insurance companies should not be allowed to do indirectly what they are forbidden to do directly, while other states have resisted such a ban. Although a fairly new issue, the question of whether insurers should be allowed to set their rates by credit scoring is not one that is likely to go away any time soon.
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Now that Texas permits home equity loans, the number of people offering such loans to make improvements on your home is skyrocketing. Unfortunately, for every honest contractor there is also a crook, and many home improvement contracts give the contractor a lien on your house that allows the contractor to foreclose if he is not paid. Before signing on the dotted line, remember the following:
• Be wary of a salesman who comes to your home uninvited, especially if he claims he was doing some work for your neighbor or was just “in the neighborhood.”
• Ask for references, with names and telephone numbers—nothing drives away a swindler quicker than a request for references.
• Beware the low ball bids or offers that seem too good to be true, because they usually are.
• Beware of people who ask for a large “deposit” or ask to be paid in full before the work is done.
• Read everything carefully before you sign it, and make sure you understand all of the terms.
• Do not sign a contract with blanks in it.
• Beware of a salesman who claims that his offer is for a “limited time” or is “today only,” especially where he is pressuring you to sign before you have read the contract.
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Texas has a law, called the Good Samaritan Law, that protects people from liability if they accidentally hurt someone else while trying to render aid during an emergency. The purpose of the law is to encourage people to try to help however they can when someone has been hurt, such as performing CPR on a person having a heart attack or by giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to a drowning victim, by protecting them against a lawsuit if they are ultimately unable to save the victim.
Unlike the laws of some other states, Texas does not require that the person giving the care be a licensed medical professional in order to be protected, but the scope of the Good Samaritan Law is limited in other ways. For example, it does not apply to a medical professional who is providing care for pay, such as an ER doctor or an ambulance attendant. It also does not apply if the person rendering the aid was the same person who caused the injury. Finally, it does not protect an aid provider if his acts were “willfully or wantonly negligent,” which means that the person was so careless that we can assume he acted with conscious indifference.
Although emergency medical treatment can sometimes hurt a victim rather than help him, Texas has decided that it will encourage people to give what help they can.
THE COSTS OF LAWSUITS: THE NUMBERS DON’T ADD UP
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A debate rages in the country today: Is there a “lawsuit crisis” and, if so, what does it cost? Those who claim that there is a crisis often cite a report from consulting firm Tillinghast Towers Perrin (TTP) claiming that lawsuits cost the country $246 billion a year. The problem with this “fact” is that the numbers just don’t add up.
A group of respected economists hired by a nonpartisan think tank found that the conclusion from the TTP report was “one sided” and “misleading.” Their study shows that the actual “costs” of lawsuits are less than one-third of the amount claimed. The TTP numbers were inflated by including things such as the insurance industry’s administrative expenses (which would be paid even if no lawsuits were filed) and payments on insurance claims. The economists fault TTP for using data that cannot be verified, because the authors claim their calculations are secret. Finally, the economists have rejected the claim that all Americans pay a “tort tax” as “indefensible.”
Insurers, big business, and others use false numbers to demonize lawyers and to convince the public that a lawsuit seeking just compensation for injuries caused by someone else is wrong. Don’t be fooled.
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