What, exactly, does the the widely publicized NASA report say about whether Toyota’s unintended acceleration problems are caused by faulty electronics? According to DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, the NASA report concludes that there is "no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration."

But the consumer group Safety Research & Strategies, Inc. does not believe the NASA engineers go that far.  It quotes the report:

Due to system complexity which will be described and the many possible electronic software and hardware systems interactions it is not realistic to prove that the ETCSi cannot cause UAs. Today’s vehicles are sufficiently complex that no reasonable amount of analysis or testing can prove electronics and software have no errors. Therefore, absence of proof that the ETCSi caused a UA does not vindicate the system.”

In effect, NASA leaves itself some wiggle room by saying: We cannot prove that the electronic system caused the errors; but the lack of proof does not mean the system is error-free.

Looks as though consumers will need turn to plaintiffs’ attorneys to identify the cause of the defective acceleration system.
 

As reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the "mystery" as to why the pipe ruptured appears to be solved. The NTSB found that the pipe was not properly welded, even by 1956 standards.  The welds were supposed to go through the whole pipe but didn’t.

In the area of pipe identified as the spot where the rupture occurred, the weld penetrated only about 50 percent of the pipe wall.

In other words, the pipe was at less than half strength. Though it’s not clear whether it was a PG&E employee or one of PG&E’s favorite contractors who did the defective work, it makes no difference.  If PG&E hired the work out, PG&E still should have had an inspector on site approving the welds. In short, whoever actually did the welding, the integrity of the final product was PG&E’s responsibility.Defective PG&E Welds

Right after their pipe exploded, PG&E promised:

If it is ultimately determined that we were responsible for the cause of the incident, we will take accountability.

So, is PG&E stepping up and taking accountability?  Not exactly.  PG&E has removed the old pledge from its website.  Now it is singing a different tune. While expressing "appreciation" to the NTSB for the "meticulous and painstaking work by its experts," PG&E nonetheless insists

  it’s premature for PG&E or anyone to speculate on what caused this accident. 

Huh? The NTSB’s "meticulous and painstaking work" found that PG&E’s welds were bad.  PG&E is responsible for those welds.  What more does PG&E need before owing up to its responsibility?

Darvon and Darvocet are names for a drug that has been prescribed for many years to manage pain. In 2009, its generic version alone — Propoxyphene — was prescribed more than 17 million times.

In November, the FDA determined that the drug can cause serious cardiac problems, including arrhythmias and heart attacks, and recommended that the drug be recalled.

The drug manufacturer didn’t warn consumers about the drug’s risk to the heart. As a result, many people who have suffered heart troubles while on Darvon never linked their problems to the drug. 

Fortunately, if a patient stopped taking the drug before he developed cardiac issues, he doesn’t need to worry. But those who have experienced symptoms while taking Darvon, or lost a family member – however long ago — may want to get more information.

Propoxyphene-containing drugs were sold by various names, including: 

  • Darvon
  • Darvocet
  • Dolene
  • Propacet 100
  • Wygesic
  • SK-65
  • SK-65 APAP
  • Trycet
  • Genagesic
  • E-Lor

More information at Girard Gibbs’ Darvon/Darvocet Lawyers website.

When a car shopper asks for a list of "must – have" safety features, I always mention air conditioning. That usually gets a chuckle.

How is an air-conditioner a safety feature? Simple. Half the people killed in rollover accidents were ejected — often through an open window. When windows are kept closed, occupants have a better chance of staying inside the vehicle, and survival rates go up considerably. But you can’t expect people to keep windows closed if the car doesn’t have an effective air conditioner.Air Conditioning and Rollovers

What about seat belts? Don’t they keep people in the car? Less often than you might think. In fact, seat belts fail to do their job in about 20% of the rollover accidents. Even when they do prevent ejection, occupants are better off with the windows closed. When the windows are open, arms tend to dangle out and get crushed between the rolling vehicle and the pavement. Heads can hit the pavement too, causing catastrophic or fatal injuries.

Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has weighed in. NHTSA isn’t quite mandating air conditioning. But beginning in 2013, manufacturers must take steps to keep occupants and their body parts inside the vehicle when the vehicle rolls over.  Even when the windows are open.  NHTSA is leaving it to the manufacturers to figure out how to accomplish this objective.  But it expects that manufacturers will use new side curtain airbags that will completely cover the window openings.

When that happens, air conditioning will be a safety feature no more.

The new NHTSA rule is here. 

Though more than 30 homes were destroyed by the PG&E gas explosion, many more suffered damage that is not visible from the street.  Getting cracked chimneys, leaky roofs, and broken windows repaired has been, for many homeowners, an overwhelming battle of paperwork, engineering reports, claims forms, and phone calls.  Some homeowners have given up trying.  As a result of the emotional trauma they have suffered, the task is just too much for them to handle.

Early on PG&E promised that it would establish a $100 million fund to those affected by the fire – no strings attached.  But so far, only $17.5 million of that has been distributed.  Shaun Bishop of the San Francisco Examiner wrote about the victims’ struggle in an article published this morning.

As I explained to Shaun, residents should not expect PG&E to compensate them fully unless they obtain a court judgment against PG&E. 

Danko said he reminds his clients that PG&E is not obligated to pay them anything unless they obtain a court judgment.

Until that happens, PG&E is free to offer as little to the victims as it likes.

Is an accident victim entitled to be paid for lost earnings if, at the time of accident, she had no job? Yes, as long as the victim had the ability to earn when the accident happened, and the accident took that ability away. For example, the victim may have been a stay-at-home mom, but she also had a medical degree and worked as a doctor before motherhood. She had no immediate plans to return to work but she was keeping that option open. Until that dreadful day when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The accident closed that door forever. With the help of her attorney, she can seek compensation for the loss of the ability to return to her career and the income as a doctor.

It is up to the victim to prove that, though she wasn’t working before the accident, she nonetheless had the capacity to earn. She can prove that with her W-2’s, records from her last job, and/or the testimony of her previous employers or co-workers. What counts are the victim’s qualifications, including his:

  • Training
  • Education
  • Experience
  • Work History
     

The victim’s attorney may need to hire an expert to testify that, in light of the victim’s qualifications and experience, the victim could have worked before the accident, but that as a result of her injuries, now she cannot. If the evidence shows that the accident damaged (or destroyed entirely) the victim’s capacity to earn, then the victim is entitled to be compensated for what she could have earned but for her injuries.

PG&E documents said that Line 132 was of seamless construction.  As it turns out, it was not.  It was of weaker, welded construction.  As I wrote here, welded seam pipes have long been known to be dangerous.  To run them safely, the utility company should pressure-test them with water to make sure that they will not give way.  PG&E didn’t do that.

A utility must determine the “Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure,” or MAOP, that a pipeline can be safely subjected to.  To set a safe MAOP, the utility must know how the pipe is constructed.  The weaker the pipe, the lower the MAOP.  Because PG&E doesn’t seem to know how its pipes are constructed — for example, whether they are of seamless or welded construction — the NTSB is concerned that PG&E may have set maximum pressures too high and that its pipelines are thus unsafe.

It is critical to know all the characteristics of a pipeline in order to establish a valid MAOP below which the pipeline can be safely operated.  The NTSB is concerned that [PG&E’s] inaccurate records may lead to incorrect MAOPs.

To prevent another San Bruno explosion, the NTSB is urgently recommending that, unless PG&E has actually water-tested a particular line, that it come up with “traceable, verifiable, and complete records” that describe the type of pipeline buried beneath the streets of populated neighborhoods.  The NTSB wants PG&E to use those records to confirm that the MAOP assigned to the pipeline is appropriate.

If PG&E can’t find reliable records for a particular pipeline, then the NTSB suggests that PG&E water-test the line to ensure that the assigned MAOP is safe.

Water tests are a last resort because customers’ gas will need to be turned off during the tests. But we already know that PG&E’s records can’t be trusted. If you ask me, there really is no other way.

 

NTSB Urgent Safety Recommendation

 

PG&E didn’t document the fact that Line 132 had welded seams.  So really, what’s the big deal? Aside from proving that PG&E is sloppy on its paperwork, what difference does make?

Plenty.

Back in 1998, the Department of Transportation sent out to all utilities, including PG&E, a Safety Alert (see below).  The Alert explained that pipes with welded seams (known as “ERW” pipes) are dangerous.  Special precautions need to be taken to make sure they don’t explode. For example, the pipes should be periodically tested to make sure they are sound.

Because PG&E’s paperwork said that the pipe was not ERW pipe, PG&E took none of the recommended safety precautions.

One of the problems with ERW pipe is that the welds are subject to a type of corrosion that is hard to detect.   According to the Alert:

ERW seams have been involved in 145 service failures . . .since 1970, and . . .all but 2 occurred on pipe manufactured prior to 1970. . .selective seam corrosion appears to  be a contributing cause of failure in a significant number of these incidents. . .

If the welded seam pipe was installed before 1970 (as was Line 132) the Alert called upon the utility to not just review the pipe’s history, but to fill it with water and pressure test it to make sure it is sound.

All operators who have pre-1970 ERW pipe in their systems should carefully review their leak, failure, and test history as well as their corrosion control records. . .operators should consider hydrostatically testing to ensure the integrity of the pipeline.

It appears that PG&E neither conducted nor even considered hydrostatically testing Line 132, despite the fact that Line 132 was suspect pre-1970 ERW pipe.

Did PG&E fail to properly document the type of pipe running through San Bruno due to a mere oversight?  Or did PG&E deliberately fail to document the pipe so that it wouldn’t have to conduct the expensive and time consuming hydrostatic tests?

Safety Alert re Welded Pipe

 

Continue Reading San Bruno Fire: PG&E Was Supposed To Test Welded Seam Pipe

Some estimate that automotive rear-enders cause about three million cervical injuries (a.k.a. "whiplash" injuries) in the U.S. each year. The injuries are real. According to the Insurance Research Council, the average payout for these injuries, which includes medical costs, lost wages, and pain and suffering, is around $8,000. Do the math. The potential cost of these injuries to insurance companies is an estimated $24 billion annually.

The insurance companies evade, avoid, and outright refuse to pay such costs.  In fact, to keep from paying, the insurance industry has developed a "no crash, no cash" policy. To keep from paying valid claims, the industry has created a fiction: if the vehicle is not damaged, then neither is the occupant.
 

Here are the tactics the industry uses to avoid paying:
 

• The insurance company tells the injured party: "Sorry, but we don’t believe injury is possible when the property damage is so low. We won’t pay." The patient has trouble finding an attorney because the attorney’s percentage of the amount recovered (remember, it averages $8,000) is not worth his time and resources.
• If the victim finds an attorney, the attorney is often outmatched by the insurance company lawyers who are intent on ensuring that the attorney loses money on the case so that he’ll never take another one.
• The insurance company lawyers will show a photo of the undamaged rear end of the car and tell the jury "This is a nonevent". The insurance company lawyers villainize the victim as a greedy plaintiff looking for a quick buck.
• The insurance company hires medical experts to spout their argument: "Injuries don’t happen in low-speed impacts; if they do they are like bruises and will heal within six weeks".
• The insurance company supports an entire industry of accident reconstructionists and biomechanists who may impress the jury with their PhD’s; and at the same time bore them with one-sided research articles, complex mathematical formulas and contrived statistics.
• The victim’s treating doctor, with limited courtroom experience, is ill-prepared to counter the insurance company’s hired guns.
• The plaintiff lawyer may be uninformed about the insurance industries’ prevailing strategy and unprepared to cross-examine the hired guns.

As a result, millions of folks who are injured due to no fault of their own go uncompensated by the insurance companies.  Never mind that the insurance companies collect premiums to pay exactly that sort of victim.
 

More than 30 lawsuits have been filed in San Mateo County. Judge Steven Dylina was assigned to preside over the cases. Pursuant to his order, all the lawyers working on the cases met on December 2 to discuss amongst themselves how the cases should be handled. After that meeting, Judge Dylina set a first court date of December 21. 

A few lawsuits have also been filed in San Francisco County. PG&E asked that those cases be combined with the ones in San Mateo so that all the cases could be heard by the same judge. Judge Forcum of San Mateo County has been appointed to decide whether the San Francisco cases should be grouped with the San Mateo County cases and, if so, which judge should hear them.

Because Judge Forcum has not yet made his decision (that won’t come until January, at the earliest), on Thursday Judge Dylina cancelled the hearing set for December 21. Judge Dylina will set a new hearing date after Judge Forcum makes his ruling.

On Tuesday, the National Transportation Board said thatSan Bruno Pipe Welds the pipe that failed was welded together instead of being of seamless construction. This is important because PG&E’s documents said that the pipe was a seamless pipe, which is stronger than one that is welded. Furthermore, it looks as though at least one weld was missing. A missing weld, of course, would make the pipe even weaker. 

PG&E has yet to offer an explanation for why the pipe was welded when its documentation said that it was a stronger, seamless pipe.