Posted on 05/11/2004 10:01:19 AM PDT by presidio9
A rented SUV was speeding at more than 90 mph when it clipped a car it was trying to pass and veered out of control, killing seven people inside, including four young children, authorities said.
The Ford Explorer went airborne, slammed into trees in the median of Interstate 95 and landed on its roof. The accident happened Sunday about 10 miles west of Bangor in south-central Maine.
Two women and a child died when they were thrown from the SUV, while its other four occupants -- a woman and three children -- died inside. Troopers initially thought five people died, but two additional bodies were found when the SUV was lifted, authorities said.
The victims were from South Portland, and four of the children were 8 or younger, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.
Killed were Kelley Armstrong, 28, and her 4-year-old son; Danielle St. Paulin, 29, and her three children; and Hope Gagnon, 29. St. Paulin's children ranged in age from 4 to 8.
The Explorer was rented from Hertz at the Portland International Jet Port earlier in the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What is it about the old F-150 to which you refer?
Having read this far it seems the rollover was due to impact and not to basic instability since there were long skid lines indicating a sideways slide; the vehicle is exhonerated IMO.
This picture has an important clue; the left rear wheel has no tire, this suggests that the crease in the right front fender above the wheel well on the car that was struck came from the tire of the Explorer. This could easily have caused a sudden deflation of the Explorer's tire and a severe loss of control.
Exonerated? Long sideways slides don't always flip vehicles.
I am not anti SUV, but you cannot argue that they have an equivalent or lower rollover risk than other vehicles. They do, its physics. It takes less to roll them over, and that's a simple matter of physics.
I drive a full size conversion van, So I know about vehicles with high centers of gravity. I also know that even though I have a very high center of gravity relative to most cars... that my statitical odds of truly rolling over is far less than MOST SUVS, and that if it does go onto its side, the likely hood of continuing to roll is less and the likelihood of head injury should it roll is less.
You put a lot of wieght on a body, have it higher off the ground that comparable vehicles because you know.. you need that whatever inches of ground clearance, even though it will never be off road, nor really designed to be offroad (most of the time) yet it looks "cooler" then have a body style on top of it that lends itself more easily to a rolling flip should it go over.. .and wow, you wind up with lots of peoples skulls being crushed from accidents that in other vehicles would likely have lived.
Now, with all that said, I could frankly care less about SUV's... people want to buy em fine.. I just wish they would learn how to drive them properly!! You don't take a ford expedition, get it up to 75 or 80 miles an hour or more and weave it in and out of traffic like you are in a honda civic.... and then low and behold pretend that the vehicle when combined with that sort of driving combined to cause a rollover. Yes it was the drivers responsibility to drive the vehicle in a safe manner... but you cannot ignore the fact that had that driver been in another type of vehicle the resulting accident would have likely been less catastrophic.
So, SUV's aren't inately bad or evil.. .but folks do need to learn how to drive them safely if they are going to own one and operate it on the roadways.
Hey guys, Nik's back.
I don't recall a return visit from an insider since pris. LOL
Bad SUV, bad! I don't know of any vehicle whose occupants would survive a 90+ crash. Dumbass CNN morons.
I pulled an 8,000lb tractor with my SUV.
Not quite true... The consequences of the impact are changed by the vehicle design - a lower, more stable vehicle might not have flipped and so forth.
The bottom line, however, is that inappropriate driver behavior was the root cause of these deaths.
Heck, if it wasn't hard-wired in there a lot of people wouldn't use their brake lights.
Very well said, your post there. Too bad we have such a joke of a driver's education ssytem. It's killing people.
Are you a product of the Maine educational system? Don't they teach punctuation and grammar?
What can you say about someone driving an SUV full of kids 90 mph. Maybe a person with less money, less of a yuppy, with a thought or 2 towards other people sharing this planet wouldn't have been driving that kind of a vehicle that fast.
I was agreeing with you on everything until that. I don't think you can make that assertion when dealing with a vehicle going 90MPh, recklessly on the berm of the road, and clipping another vehicle. This had the strong potential of being 100% fatal regardless of the auto involved. At those kinds of speeds and surfaces, once a vehicle gets out of control at that speed all bets are off. This is especially true if the reckless vehicle was on an uneven surface when it clipped the other car. If it were a smaller, lighter vehicle it could have easily gone airborne and flown like a missle until stopped by contact with a large fixed object, like a tree, telephone pole, etc. About 30 years ago I adjusted insurance claims and investigated lots of fatal accidents in small cars that went down like this. Speed kills, make no doubt about it.
True, and I agree, but I'd add that I don't want to hear them whining about how much gas, or home heating oil, or air travel, or anything else which uses petroleum costs, because of the SUV's fuel inefficiency. Nor do I want to hear them whining about the U.S. sucking up to OPEC.
For the old F-150 and relatives, in a frontal accident with either a stationary or equivalent-sized object the cab basically collapses on the occupants and the driver's door opens. Anything about 30mph and up will have you in the hospital or dead. Many much smaller cars are actually far safer for this type of accident.
IIRC, the recent redesign on the F-150 fixed this problem.
"Unsafe at any speed"
lol, im very busy and forget to come check on this.. i was interested in what the other girl that knew kelly when she was younger, had for a reply to what i said.. im sure shes an old friend and wants to .... vindicate? her, which is understandable i guess, but the whole story is really sad
I just moved from portland, to bangor, which is about 10 minutes from carmel, where the crash happened.. everytime i go by i try to see where it happened, but can never find it.. anyone know what mile marker it was? it had said in one of the papers, but i cant find it now
If im writing a letter to the president, i bother with my grammer, if im typing fast on a website, posting comments.. i dont really take the time with it.. thank you so much for ur deep concern!
I've had my VUE up to 105 and it's handled fine. That being said, I know that if I jerked the wheel, there would be... unpleasant consequences.
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