FIRST-EVER VERDICT IN CONVERSION VAN CASE
Wright v. GM
NORTH CAROLINA - A jury found in favor of the family of five people who died after they were ejected from a conversion van when it overturned and the roof came off.
It is believed to be the first time a verdict rendered in a van conversion case and the first time a jury held the original manufacturer liable.
The Wright family was traveling from Florence, South Carolina to New York to visit an ailing relative when the van overturned near Rocky Mount, NC, on Interstate 95. Five people were killed, including two children, a 9-month-old girl and an 11-year-old girl.
The family's rented van had a raised roof made of fiberglass, which was attached to the van after converters removed the factory-installed welded steel top and the welded cross beams, which are used to hold the roof in place and provide rigidity and structure to the van.
The raised fiberglass top is attached to the van with nothing more than sheet-metal screws, providing virtually crash protection in a rollover crash. Fiberglass easily fractures when it strikes the ground. In crashes, roofs in conversion vans simply pop off because the screws used to attach them to the vehicle pull through the fiberglass or shear off.
The automotive industry stopped using screws in roof construction in 1935. Despite its knowledge of the hazard, the auto industry makes no effort to demand that its converters preserve the integrity of a van's safety when an original factory roof is removed. Detroit does not require converters to use a raised steel roof or any steel bracing to keep a fiberglass roof on a van in foreseeable crashes.
Converters exacerbate the problem by enlarging window openings, in some cases all the way to the floorboards, increasing the area of ejection in the event of a crash. To add to the danger, neither the auto industry nor the converters use bonded laminated glass in any of the side or rear windows to reduce the risk of ejection.
Despite controlling the access and distribution of these vans, automakers refuse to accept responsibility for the ills wrought by van modifications.
