Churches are putting faith in these old vans that could kill

A Ford Motor Company employee test-driving a 15-passenger van flipped it while swerving through a series of cones in 1990.

He didn’t report it. He blamed himself, not the van — and his superiors agreed. That vehicle, the E350, dominated the large-van market for years.

But a Florida jury in March blamed that same make and model van for a woman’s death, granting her four children and husband nearly $20 million in damages.

The left-rear tire on the 2002 E350 had shredded. The van flipped, and passenger Michalanne Salliotte, 44, was tossed from the vehicle and crushed on Feb. 21, 2014.

Salliotte and the driver, who also died, were among five people thrown out as the van tumbled. One was a teenager who had to repeat a year of school because of brain damage. Seven others were injured.

The jury also found the First Baptist Church of New Port Richey negligent for not keeping seat belts in the van within reach.

Transportation safety officials have known since 2001 that 15-passenger vans like the E350 are prone to roll in a crash when loaded with people. Federal officials have issued repeated safety warnings to carmakers and the public. Some insurance companies refuse to cover them. A major religious denomination advises member churches to avoid them. And at least 28 states prohibit public schools from using them to transport students.

Yet many churches around the country still use the old vans to haul kids to swimming pools, take parishioners to services or deliver members to conferences and revival meetings.

And people still die.

Salliotte is one of 600 people killed in single-vehicle rollovers involving 15-passenger vans since safety warnings were first issued 17 years ago.

Echos of the Carrollton crash

Churches around Louisville and across Kentucky commonly use the vans, just as they employed surplus school buses 30 years ago, when 27 people died in a fiery crash on Interstate 71 near Carrollton on May 14, 1988.

For years before the Carrollton deaths, federal officials and industry experts also issued repeated warnings about inherent dangers in the old school bus' design: an unprotected gas tank. Flammable seat fabric. Insufficient emergency exits.

Kentucky, meanwhile, had no effective laws or regulations aimed at ensuring church buses were adequately maintained or safely operated.

Those dangers conspired to cause one of the worst bus tragedies in U.S. history when a drunken driver slammed into a bus carrying 67 members of the Radcliff First Assembly of God on their way home from an Ohio amusement park.

The Carrollton tragedy prompted more safety features in newer buses and regulatory reform: Kentucky ordered all private buses, including church buses, to undergo annual inspections.

But old school buses soon fell out of favor. Operating costs were high, and congregations struggled to find parishioners with newly required commercial driver's licenses.

Many churches turned to 15-passenger vans, said Curt Mitchell, of Carpenter Bus Sales in Franklin, Tennessee, a major church transportation sales company.

Louisville-area church leaders thought the vans would be safer, said Jack Roberts, pastor of Louisville's Maryville Baptist Church.

“The law and the insurance company got really hard on the larger buses,” Roberts said. “To keep everything proper, we did away with all of our older buses and went with the vans.”

All they did was trade one danger for another.

Rollover risk

Chrysler launched its 15-passenger van, the Dodge Ram Wagon, for the 1971 model year. Ford Motor Company introduced a competitor in 1979. And General Motors followed in 1990, eventually producing the GMC Savannah and Chevrolet Express.

The vans were a hit with organizations needing to haul a crowd, particularly because any member of the congregation could get behind the wheel. No special license required.

Buyers were encouraged to fill every seat. One ad boasted the Dodge Ram Wagon could carry “15 happy campers.”

But as the vans fill up, rollovers become more likely.

Courier Journal analyzed millions of crash records from six states between 2004 and 2017, finding older vans that lack modern safety features have about a 52 percent chance of rolling in a crash when fully loaded and driving at highway speeds.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) drew similar conclusions when it analyzed van crashes in 2001 after several rollovers involving college students made headlines.

NHTSA found the van's center of gravity shifts up and to the rear when fully loaded, raising the likelihood of rollover if the driver makes a tight turn or swerves for any reason. It's also harder for the driver to keep control if a tire blows, as happened in the crash that killed Michalanne Salliotte.

The bottom line: Any vehicle can roll over in some circumstances, but the big vans are much more likely to do so. And they're more dangerous if people use them as the manufacturers intended.

“The odds of a rollover for a 15-passenger van at its designed seating capacity, is more than five times the odds of a rollover when the driver is the only occupant in the van,” NHTSA said in 2004. “This compares to ratios of close to two for SUVs and Minivans, 1.6 for pickup trucks and 1.2 for passenger cars.”

And those rollovers aren't just more likely, they're also more deadly.

Seventy-one percent of deaths in 15-passenger vans happen in rollover crashes, compared to 48 percent for all vehicles, according to a Courier Journal analysis of fatal crashes nationwide since 2001.

In a prepared statement, Ford said "substantial government data show these vehicles provide a high level of safety comparable to other vehicles in a wide range of conditions, including rollovers."

The company did not specify which data it referenced.

To accommodate 15 passengers, Ford and Chrysler extended the bodies of vans designed to haul 12 passengers or cargo, allowing a fifth row of seats. They kept the same wheelbase, or distance between the axles, as the smaller vans.

Slide the bar left to right to see difference between 15- and 12-passenger vans

Evidence presented in the Salliotte lawsuit shows Ford product planners recommended extending the wheelbase and adding dual rear wheels, which make the vans more stable and better able to bear the weight of the extended body. An internal assessment of the E350 Ford described that configuration as a “superior product.”

Ford rejected the “superior product” because of “engineering resource priorities” — upfront manufacturing costs would have run about $7 million higher. For 36 years, until the van was retired after the 2014 model year, Ford produced the E350 without extending the wheelbase.

GM's first 15-passenger van was built on a longer wheelbase, and the company extended it further starting in 1996.

Chrysler discontinued its big van in 2002, replacing it with a long-wheelbase Mercedes Sprinter. A Chrysler spokesman said market conditions prompted the change.

About 600,000 15-passenger vans with varying safety features are still on the road today, according to a 2015 estimate by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Ford fights back

Ford historically dominated the 15-passenger van market. It also fiercely disputed safety advisories and fought government requests to make their vans safer.

For example, when the National Transportation Safety Board in 2003 advised Ford and GM to improve passenger protection in rollovers, GM complied but Ford questioned whether changes would save lives.

“We didn’t believe that we needed to do anything,” James Vondale, a retired director of Ford’s automotive safety office, said during a 2012 lawsuit deposition.

GM also introduced electronic stability control, a braking system that helps drivers stay in control on slick surfaces and in emergencies, for model year 2004. Ford did so in its late 2005 model year.

When fully loaded and driving at highway speeds, vans with electronic stability control are about nine times less likely to roll in a crash than are vans without it, according to Courier Journal's crash analysis. And for every 10 fatal rollovers involving 15-passenger vans, nine are models built before the safety feature became standard.

More than a million 12- and 15-passenger vans without stability control were sold after the first government safety advisory. More than half were Fords, according to sales figures collected by the Automotive News Data Center.

While it's possible to retrofit older models, high cost and technical issues make it unrealistic for most churches.

Vondale, during a 2012 civil lawsuit deposition, said the old vans are fine without it. And during the Salliotte trial, a Ford representative called the vans "reasonably safe if used in a reasonable way."

The company’s testing shows the E350 behaves predictably in an emergency and has plenty of safety features, such as anti-lock brakes, Ford consultant Don Tandy testified. Tests that showed otherwise were done incorrectly, he said.

Of course the vehicle handles differently than others, he said, because it is bigger and heavier.

"You've got to make it handle different. It's not a racecar. It's not a sports car. This is a commercial vehicle ... that's just what it is," he testified.

Tandy used to work for Ford, where he helped design the E350's suspension.

The Ford test driver who flipped the van during that 1990 swerve test praised the vehicle’s handling. When he described the van tipping over, he wouldn’t call it a rollover. Instead, he said, the van “laid down” on the driver’s side.

Vondale testified in 2012 that NHTSA’s data were flawed, and that warnings to drivers from insurance companies and other safety-focused organizations that relied on it were wrong, too.

Though Ford began including rollover risk warnings in van owner's guides for the 2003 model year, Vondale said the company believed none of the information was accurate.

“So Ford published this to owners and users of the E350 van even though Ford believed it to be untrue; is that what you’re telling us?” asked plaintiff’s attorney Randy Barnhart.

“I wouldn’t describe it that way,” Vondale responded. “The intent of what we were trying to do here was to try to take as much information as we could from what NHTSA has said.”

Read this: Child's death led family in a crusade for 15-passenger van safety

Ford's approach in dealing with complaints about the E350 raised the ire of a federal judge hearing a lawsuit stemming from a 1996 crash on Interstate 64 near Ashland, Kentucky.

In that crash, the driver of a big van carrying 16 children and adults dozed off. The van swerved into a guardrail, then rolled when the driver over-corrected and veered across both travel lanes.

The bodies of two passengers, a woman and a 6-year-old girl, were found amid clothes, pillows blankets and Bibles strewn across the crash scene. All of the other passengers were injured. A woman who was severely injured in the crash sued Ford.

According to transcripts of a pretrial hearing, the auto company's attorneys claimed Ford had never done computer simulations to measure the effectiveness of design and factors that contribute to loss of control in rollovers.

But James Lowe, the plaintiffs’ attorney, presented evidence that Ford did the tests but hid the results from the court, prompting U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the Northern District of Illinois to say that Ford’s behavior “borders on criminal.”

“I don’t want to believe a corporation like Ford does stuff like this. I don’t want to believe it. I’m being convinced against my own instincts,” Gettleman said from the bench.

The lawsuit was settled out of court.

In a written statement to Courier Journal, Ford said no automaker or technology can completely eliminate rollovers. The company said it supports NHTSA's recommendation to, whenever possible, use experienced drivers familiar with the van's handling characteristics.

"At Ford Motor Company, the safety of our customers is a priority. Any time someone loses a life in a vehicle accident, it’s a tragedy. Our thoughts and deepest condolences go out to all these affected families. We support government recommendations that encourage occupants to buckle up and drivers of these vehicles to avoid excessive speed and abrupt maneuvers."

Van rollover warnings 'useless'

As gruesome crashes involving 15-passenger vans gripped headlines in the early 2000s, some people called for the vehicles to be taken off the road. A former NHTSA director was among them.

Joan Claybrook, who headed the agency during the Carter administration, pushed for a recall from her position leading the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

She said NHTSA told her too few people were being killed to justify the cost, and the automakers would likely sue the agency.

So NHTSA just issued “useless warnings,” Claybrook said.

NHTSA did mount an extensive publicity campaign about van safety. In 2005, NHTSA administrator Jeffrey Runge said, "The vans are convenient, but drivers and passengers have to use extra caution. The risks associated with 15-passenger vans can be minimized if users take some basic safety precautions. Routinely checking the condition of the tires, including the tire pressure, should be at the top of the list."

Claybrook was not impressed.

“All they had to do was put out a report justifying a recall and the industry would have caved,” she said. “They avoided taking responsibility and carrying out their duty. I was outraged.”

NHTSA did not respond to repeated interview requests.

Carmakers have faced countless lawsuits from crash victims or their families, but they steadfastly maintain there's no reason to take the vans off the road.

It’s often easier for companies to manage litigation than it is to recall vehicles, said Tab Turner, an Arkansas attorney who has represented plaintiffs in dozens of cases against Ford.

Manufacturers have time on their side, Turner said. They know lawsuits will dwindle as vehicles wear out and are scrapped. Many states also sharply limit the ability to file a product-liability lawsuit on older vehicles.

Kentucky does not have a hard deadline, but plaintiffs must meet an extra burden if a product is older than eight years or if more than five years have passed since it first sold.

Even without a recall, churches have gradually shifted away from 15-passenger vans, though not all can afford the $55,000 starting price of a safer mini-bus, said Mitchell, the Tennessee bus salesman.

NHTSA in the 2000s ordered major changes to make new 15-passenger vans safer, including mandating tire pressure monitoring and three-point seat belts.

But nothing was done to make the old vans safer.

"This legacy is going to be with us for a while," said Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, a Massachusetts consumer advocacy group.

Dozens of these old vans remain in church lots throughout Louisville. Many are like the Ford E350 that rolled in Oregon in February, injuring the driver and all 10 passengers.

Members of churches in Lewiston, Idaho, were traveling to a youth conference in Portland when the van driver tried to exit the freeway at the last minute near Hermiston, Oregon. The driver lost control, the van went down an embankment and rolled twice, according to a police report. Two passengers were thrown; five were trapped in the wreck.

The driver was cited for an unsafe lane change. Drivers typically are cited in rollover crashes, but that doesn't get the manufacturer off the hook in later court action, Turner said.

A leader in the church that owned the van said her congregation liked using it because group travel helped members bond. Now, she said, it's not worth the risk.

“We will no longer be using 15-passenger vans. We don’t want to put our church family at any risk,” said Kathy Johnson, administrator for Lewiston's Congregational Presbyterian. “It was devastating; crushing; heart-breaking.”

A New York man who regularly drove his church's 2005 Ford recently came to a similar conclusion.

Greg Gartland, of Greece, New York, was driving nine church members to a taekwondo competition when the E350 hit black ice on State Route 90 near Erie, Pennsylvania, in November 2017.

He said a passenger car driving ahead of the van slid on the ice but kept going. Gartland lost control. The van swerved and flipped. His wife broke the first two vertebrae in her neck; his 16-year-old son broke his back. Another child suffered a concussion and an adult passenger needed nine staples to close a head wound.

Gartland said he drove the Journey Christian Church van for 10 years, but no amount of experience or training could have prepared him for that moment.

“You’re helpless; you’re along for the ride,” he said, vowing to never again drive a 15-passenger van.

The vans in the Oregon and Pennsylvania crashes were built before safety improvements such as electronic stability control.

Even with modern safety improvements, "the vehicle's basic flaws cannot be engineered out," the Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance wrote in a 2014 guide to 15-passenger vans.

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Those flaws include high center of gravity; flat sides that make them vulnerable to crosswinds; and seating configurations placing excessive weight over the left rear tire, according to the group, which is part of a network that insures more than 17,000 nonprofits.

A 2008 E350 with electronic stability control is at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit filed in December 2017 in Missouri.

Maung Hnin, a father of four, was riding with 13 other members of his church in January 2017 when the driver lost control on a slight curve near Kansas City. The van skidded across the roadway, hit a median and rolled. Hnin was thrown out and killed when he was hit by a passing SUV. Eleven passengers were injured.

“Ford’s conduct in the design, manufacture, testing, marketing, and distribution of the Subject E350 Van exhibited a willful, malicious, wanton, and reckless disregard for the rights of the motoring public,” lawyers for the family wrote in a lawsuit against Ford, the van driver and the driver who hit Hnin.

In court papers Ford said the van “was not defective or unreasonably dangerous in any manner." The van driver and the driver of the SUV that hit Hnin argued they weren’t to blame for his death.

Religious freedom trumps safety

Government agencies and insurance companies stress that drivers should take special precautions before taking a 15-passenger van for a trip.

But that’s only advice.

“Unfortunately, we can’t watch over everybody 24/7; we’re taking their word for it,” said Church Mutual insurance risk control analyst Kyle Illbeck.

Things would be different if training and licensing requirements necessary for driving a bus applied to church vans, said North Carolina-based Redwoods Group, which insures nonprofit organizations.

Organizations like churches using 15-passenger vans are exempt from federally required annual inspections and rules concerning driver safety as long as they're not charging for rides, said Bill Reese, of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.

Few states have more rules. Out of 25 states that responded to a Courier Journal survey, only California requires a commercial license to drive a 15-passenger church van.

"I think the data show it's a problem," Reese said. “But it’s a church-versus-state issue.”

If the government started regulating churches like commercial businesses, religious leaders “are going to start making phone calls to politicians,'' he said. "It really is a safety issue that becomes a really political hot potato."

Read more: 30th anniversary is 'a deep reminder' of deadly Carrollton bus crash

Mark Smith, of Windsor, Colorado, launched an awareness campaign after his daughter, Malori, 17, was killed in an E350 rollover while on a 2002 Victorious Christian Harvesters mission trip in Mexico.

The Texas-based organization later had dual wheels installed on all of its vans, Smith said, but a NHTSA staffer told him not to expect any tighter government regulation of church transportation.

“It’s the whole separation of church and state,” Smith said. “Any (member of Congress) is going to say the last thing I want is a PR mess of a bunch of churches saying they’re regulating us out of business."

Courier Journal made multiple attempts to ask the chairmen of the Kentucky General Assembly's transportation committees about church bus regulations. Neither Sen. Ernie Harris, R-Prospect, nor Rep. Ken Upchurch, R-Monticello, responded.

Religious organizations are largely left to police themselves.

Results vary.

Story continues below video.

Guide One, a major church insurance company, stopped issuing new policies for 15-passenger vans in the early 2000s but later resumed coverage for clients who agree to extra precautions such as allowing only qualified drivers and keeping up on maintenance.

Church Mutual still reminds clients about other vehicle options but considers the problems with 15-passenger vans largely resolved with stability control and three-point seat belts introduced in newer models.

Attorneys who have taken 15-passenger van cases say the issue has been largely forgotten.

"The folks who get in these vans, the churches, is it their job to do the research?" Kane said. "People believe that if the vehicle was inherently unsafe the government would not allow it. And that’s just not true."

Little Flock Missionary Baptist Church in Louisville regularly uses two 15-passenger vans to bring children and the elderly to church, take the elderly on outings and occasionally drive to out-of-town events. Only one of the vans has electronic stability control.

Patsy Turner, administrative assistant to the pastor, said she didn’t know the church’s oldest van, a 1999 Ford E350, presents a heightened risk.

After being contacted by Courier Journal, Turner said she'll talk to the eight-member committee that manages the vans about rollover risk.

“I don’t think it’s something that we should take lightly," she said.

In 2003, NHTSA said it needed to gather information about 15-passenger van owners to better understand how the vans are used.

"Little is known about the approximately 500,000 vehicles of this type on the road," the agency said. "Information is needed on whether certain groups (e.g., church, school, college, military, government, migrant workers) are over- or under-represented in crashes, injuries and fatalities, especially in rollover crashes."

The agency later dropped the idea, saying it would be too expensive and too time-consuming.

In 2009, the agency said it would analyze the effects of stability control on new van models. In 2017 it did release a report on stability control use in all vehicles, but it didn't focus on the big vans, which were lumped in with pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans.

NHTSA does maintain a website showing advisories and safety recommendations issued over the years but has done little more research on 15-passenger van rollovers.

But just last week, NHTSA released a new advisory, titled "Our Commitment to 15-Passenger Van Safety."

"While popular and useful, older 15-passenger vans do not have the safety technologies required on new vehicles," the advisory reads. "In the hands of inexperienced drivers, 15-passenger vans can prove challenging to maneuver safely — given their high center of gravity and propensity to rollover as a result of quick maneuvering — which is why NHTSA is committed to providing consumers information to address 15-passenger van safety."

Kane, the consumer advocate, said true "commitment" would involve a recall.

"What a commitment," he said. "Their lack of commitment to setting regulations and pursuing enforcement activities is in large part why these dangerous vehicles are on the road – still."

NHTSA, citing fewer 15-passenger van deaths, said in 2008 that its public awareness campaign and vehicle safety improvements might be working.

That trend has continued: Fewer people are dying.

In 2001, 94 people were killed in single-vehicle 15-passenger van crashes. Since the advent of electronic stability control, the death toll has, in fact, dropped: 31 people died in 2016.

That's still too many for Rick Koehler, a South Carolina man who's fought a lonely campaign for 15-passenger van safety since his 10-year-old granddaughter was killed in a 2007 rollover.

“To me, that level of death is not acceptable,” Koehler said while visiting the grave of his granddaughter, Alexis James, in Knoxville. “It almost feels like, 'well, it’s gone down this far so that’s all that we can do.' That’s not true. There is more that we can do. They’ve become complacent. The regulatory agencies. The insurance companies. The churches and other users.”

The same model Dodge Ram van that killed Alexis can still be found in church parking lots. The one used by St. Paul Baptist Church at Shively Heights in West Louisville bears a sign reading “Bringing the People to God."

A church leader did not respond to a request for comment.

What can churches do?

An NTSB analysis of two 15-passenger van crashes in the early 2000s found that drivers need extensive training to control a van during a tire-tread separation.

So, the agency recommended that GM and Ford develop driver training programs. Neither did, and Ford vehemently rejected the idea.

Vondale, Ford’s former safety director, in a 2012 lawsuit deposition, said inexperienced drivers safely operate the hundreds of thousands of the vans on the road. While he said driver experience is “a good idea,” he didn’t think Ford needed to train drivers.

"It's not only not necessary,'' Vondale said. "...But the kinds of things like trying to train people to handle a, you know, an emergency like a tread separation, I'm really struggling with whether — I don't think you should do that. I don't think it would be safe."

Absent any organized training programs from manufacturers, NHTSA, insurance companies and nonprofit groups have repeatedly published risk-reduction tips, including:

Make sure everyone wears seat belts.

Remove the rear seat and do not carry anything heavy there.

Remove roof racks and trailer hitches — extra weight increases rollover risk.

Use the vans only for local travel at speeds under 45 mph.

Only let experienced drivers take the wheel.

Inspect tires weekly.

Install monitors to warn drivers when they exceed the recommended speed.

Install dual rear wheels.

The last recommendation is disputed, at least by Ford.

Tandy, the Ford consultant, testified at the Salliotte trial that the vans are not heavy enough to need dual wheels, nor do extra wheels make the vans "crash-proof." In fact, he testified, extra wheels can make vehicles more difficult to drive.

Yet critics of the 15-passenger van consider adding dual wheels — a roughly $1,500 expense — the most effective way to increase stability and guard against loss of control from a tire blowout.

Some groups recommend getting rid of 15-passenger vans entirely.

Redwoods, the nonprofit insurance company, recommends using modern small school buses. Their longer and wider wheelbases make them more stable, and their floor design offers better crash protection, the company says.

The United Methodist Church also recommends buying mini-buses, or borrowing or renting minivans.

"It is much safer and worth the added expense," a senior church official wrote. "The extra cost is simply the cost of the safety of our loved ones."

Some churches continue to operate the vans but use them sparingly. Louisville's Highland Baptist Church, for example, removed the back seat from a E350 and uses it mainly as a backup for a 2010 Starcraft mini-bus.

Jack Roberts' Maryville Baptist also tries to use a mini-bus for long rides, relegating its two E350s to short trips.

Roberts said thoughts of the Carrollton bus crash still make him nervous, 30 years later.

“Any time our bus is anywhere outside of our little community I feel that way, honestly,” he said.

But not all churches heed safety guidance, and the consequences can be dire.

Five people died in Southern Illinois in 2014 when they were thrown from a Dodge Ram van while travelling home to Maryland from a Victory Outreach event in California.

Former Fayette County Coroner Bruce Bowen said the driver, who had a suspended drivers' license, lost control of the vehicle on Interstate 70. Passengers weren't wearing seat belts, he said.

“There were pretty much bodies everywhere; it was a pretty horrifying scene,” Bowen said.

Churches can expose themselves to liability. Following the Salliotte verdict, the First Baptist Church of New Port Richey owes her family about $7.3 million.

The church was found negligent in Salliotte’s death. She wasn't wearing a seat belt — she couldn't find it. During the trial, the church’s mechanic testified the belts regularly fell between the seats, though he would pull them back into position when he did inspections.

Based on testimony of safety experts, outfitting the entire van with devices to hold the belts in place could have cost about $100.

The jury also found Michelin, the tire company, partially to blame for putting a defective tire on the market. The company had recalled the tire that blew.

'Davids in a Goliath World'

Thirty years after her 10-year-old daughter, Patricia, died in the Carrollton crash, Karolyn Nunnallee isn’t surprised that some churches still use vehicles subject to numerous safety warnings.

Her current church in Fort Meade, Florida, sold its 15-passenger van when the advisories emerged, but she said the decision may not come as easily for others lacking a “crazy woman in their congregation tuned into safety issues.”

“We’re all lulled into a sense of security that if products are for sale, they must be safe,” she said.

She sees the similarities in church transportation, then and now, and intimately knows the struggle families endure when grieving and fighting a corporate giant in court.

Nunnallee sued Ford after the Carrollton crash — first offering to accept just $1 in compensation if the company would install cages around the fuel tanks of old buses.

Ford wouldn’t take that offer, though it did agree to pay a confidential settlement amount.

The story just seems to repeat itself, she said. But she urged people not to give up.

“We are the Davids in a Goliath world,” Nunnallee said. “We have to continue to be the Davids, we have to continue to load up our slingshots and sling those rocks at the big giants.”

Caitlin McGlade: 502-582-4144; cmcglade@gannett.com; Twitter: @caitmcglade. Justin Price: 502-582-4464; jjprice@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @justinjprice. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/caitlinm

About this report

Caitlin McGlade and Justin Price are members of Courier Journal's six-member investigative unit. McGlade, a native of Dayton, Ohio, was a reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Arizona Republic before joining the newly formed team in December.

Price is an Arizona native who worked with the investigative team at the Palm Beach Post and at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. He joined Courier Journal in August, 2017.

To contact team members:

James G. Wright, Investigations Director: 502-582-4697; jwright@gannett.com

Caitlin McGlade, Investigative Reporter: 502-582-4144; cmcglade@gannett.com

Justin Price, Data Reporter: 502-582-4464, jjprice@gannett

Allison Ross, Investigative Reporter: 502-582-4241; aross@gannett.com

Andrew Wolfson, Investigative Reporter: 502-582-7189; awolfson@gannett.com

William Kantlehner, Research Assistant: 502-582-4260; wkantlehne@gannett.com

15-passenger crash analysis

To analyze rollover van crashes, Courier Journal obtained more than a decade of statewide crash data from Texas, Missouri, Florida, Maryland, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The Ford Econoline, Dodge Ram Wagon, Chevrolet Express and GMC Savannah were included in the analysis and were identified using VIN patterns specific to 15-passenger vans.

Courier Journal measured the vans’ rollover propensity in single-vehicle crashes using a predictive statistical model similar to one NHTSA used in its 2004 analysis.

Fatal crashes were measured using nationwide data from the Fatal Analysis Reporting System, or FARS.