The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Chrysler has paid an undisclosed amount of money to the Escobar family of Cobb County, Georgia. On June 6, 2006, Gabriel Escobar crushed his brother to death when he shifted the family's 1997 Plymouth Voyager out of park. Although the story claims the death could have prevented by a $9 brake shift interlock– which Chrysler didn't fit to its vehicles until 2001– it's also true that the minivan wouldn't have moved if the Escobar's babysitter hadn't let young Ian "escape" from the house and Mrs. Escobar hadn't left four-year-old Gabriel Escobar unsupervised in the minivan– with the keys in the ignition. Escobar's lawyer claims there have been 23 similar deaths nationwide, including a recent tragedy in Connecticut. In that accident, a toddler knocked a 1999 Grand Voyager out of park, sending it into a lake, drowning four.
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Now, tell me again why on earth I would want to have any business in the United States at all, after reading this?
What in God’s name has happened to personal responsibility?
My son, age 24 (and in university) had a summer party a week ago, had a few too many beers, jumped 15 feet into a river and broke his L1 vertebra (he is not, thank God, crippled – just hurt badly). He admitted it was his own fault, finally had to go to the hospital near his college. He has no insurance (mine no longer covers him since he is now over 23).
The financial assistance person turned him down for Medicaid (even though he is out of work for the summer) but asked him if it happened on private property?! Clearly, she would have provided him with a name of a schiester lawyer had it happened on private property.
After all the hospital wants their money for a CAT scan faster than a poor college kid can pay it back at $25 a month.
This country has become a lawsuit joke gone horribly wrong. How can people blame a large company for a death when it is their own neglegance that caused it. Pathetic how everything has a price tag attached to it now a days even people or your own kids.
Anybody that’s going to allow an underage child to sit unattended in a vehicle with the car keys inside is asking for trouble. Think about all the cases where idiot parents leave their kids in the car in the summer “for just a little while” – and the kids die from the heat. Do we blame the vehicle manufacturer for failing to build some sort of emergency alarm system that would detect a kid who’s roasting – or windows that automatically roll down if the car “knows” a kid is in trouble? Give me strength. What ever happened to personal responsibility?
This is insane. My Volvo S70 (manual transmission) didn’t have any interlocks at all and I never killed anyone. You could start the damn thing in first, go straight from 5th to reverse on the freeway, etc. If you were stupid enough to do the above, than it’s your own damn fault.
So what did we do before brake-shift interlocks existed?
I remember when I was a child I did something similar. My parents had a Cavalier station wagon with a manual transmission. My mom went in the store for just a minute to grab a loaf of bread. Meanwhile I decided to play “drive the car just like mommy” and started playing with the stickshift and the handbrake. The car was parked on an incline and started to roll backwards across the parking lot. I even tried doing like what I’d seen my parents do when they needed to move the car without starting it by opening up the door and sticking my foot out to try to stop it and push it back, but being like 4 years old of course it didn’t work (apparently I didn’t know what the brake was for or how to operate it). The car amazingly managed to roll all the way across the parking lot past rows of cars with me inside without striking anyone or anything until the rear tires stopped on a parking bumper at the edge of the lot. Pretty stupid of me but I was like 4 years old…
OK, let’s defang the McDonalds Coffee Bitch thing before it gets inevitably mentioned here:
http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm
Similarly, do we really have all the facts in this Chrysler case? Yes, on the face of it, it sounds stupid, but I’m not willing to accept these stories at face value anymore, because the actual facts often tell a different story.
Considering how the auto industry doesn’t seem to do well when a ‘design flaw’ results in a tragic death (Audi’s sudden accleration, rolling Samurai, Bronco II, Explorers, & CJ-7’s, exploding Pintos, pickup trucks, Crown Victorias, etc.,), it was very wise of Chrysler to settle quickly before the bad publicity dooms them even further, if that’s still possible.
May the pox even the score with the Escobar family and their lawyer.
As long as we are posting links about the McDonald’s coffee case, how about a page of the real facts instead of the legal industry’s spin control.
http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban_legends_and_stella_liebe.html
I think my 91 Accord had that feature because they or some other auto company had been sued. If this feature had been around for some time and if it is known to prevent these kind of accidents which do happen then why didn’t Chrsyler add the stupid part back in the day.
Does no one in this country use a parking brake? A properly applied parking brake would have held the minivan in place even in drive. I constantly see people slamming their cars into P and walking away, many times with the car on a hill or bouncing back and forth because they didn’t bother to come to a full stop before slamming it into P. How did they win this case without using a the supplied parking brake?
Let me call everyone’s attention to the phrase “undisclosed amount of money”. Yes, it’s a ridiculous claim, but I’m guessing they settled for far less than the cost of mounting a defense in a case like this.