KIRO-Seattle
I knew the headline from the fatal luxury motor home crash would be short-lived, something like: RV loses brakes on mountain. One dead.
I stuck a note inside my “when-I-have-time” file as a reminder to pursue the story later. Within two days, the accident fell off the local news media’s radar.
When we returned to the story nearly a year later, our investigative team had not only uncovered new evidence about the RV crash itself, but also discovered apparent design flaws in an entire series of luxury motor homes.
Lonnie Owens hammered the brake pedal of his nine-ton Monaco Monarch Coach over and over, but he couldn’t get it to stop. Less than an hour earlier, Owens and his family had been gazing out over the Olympic Mountains from a national park viewpoint called Hurricane Ridge. On the way down the long sloping road back to Port Angeles, the RV’s stopping power vanished because of “brake fade,” which happens when the drums heat up, turn blue and accumulate a slick glaze similar to glass. Owens was an experienced motor home driver, but without brakes, he lost control. The RV slammed into three other cars and then plowed off a shallow ravine. In all, 14 people were injured. Owens was dead.
I started looking for a way to put this brake failure into perspective. Our investigative unit started with Fatality Analysis Reporting System data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to get an idea of how many fatal RV accidents were reported nationwide and then specifically in the Pacific Northwest. We ran a univariate query on the FARS Web site, listing body type as “camper/motor home.” We also ran a series of queries to determine how many other fatal accidents might have involved a motor home, but had been listed as an “unknown” body type in the database.
To clarify some of the FARS data, we sent open records requests to both the Washington and Oregon state patrols and asked for all injury-accident investigations involving RVs. Washington had 22 fatal or injury accidents that matched. Oregon had 14. A pattern emerged. Brake failures, blown tires and flying interior debris were part of a disproportionately high number of the cases for a type of RV known as a “Class A.” These are the biggest RVs and are defined by their flat-nosed, boxy front end and high price.
The blown tire issues were largely historic, but complaints about poorly secured cabinets and appliances popped up year after year. I also downloaded a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, provided on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Web site, concerning all consumer complaints regarding all vehicles. I converted the data to a Microsoft Access database and then ran simple queries by putting in the names of major RV manufacturers.
It was a pleasant surprise to find the database held information that went beyond cars and trucks. There are thousands of informal complaints written by motor home owners. Some were frivolous, at least when it came to road safety, but hundreds of other narratives provided direct insight into our safety investigation.
(IRE members can purchase the FARS and NHTSA complaints data from the Database Library.)
At some point in this information-gathering process, an assignment editor (who happened to be in the market for a new motor home) came to my desk with an article on the Hurricane Ridge accident from the independent RV Consumer Group Web site. The article contained photos, taken by the Web site creator, of the Owens’ RV crash scene. We had tried to get access to that same RV for our investigation, but the insurance companies and police kept it locked up and refused to let us too close. I called the Web site’s operators, JD and Connie Gallant. It turns out that JD had walked up to the Owens’ RV the day after the accident and took hundreds of photos, many showing the interior of the motor home.
He showed me the photos and pointed out one in particular. The photo showed a heavy wooden cabinet that had ripped apart from the walls of the RV. It sat squarely across Lonnie Owens’ seat. As Gallant put it, some “screw and glue” might have saved Owens’ life.
We were so busy trying to broaden the scope of our investigation that I almost missed the opportunity to shed new light on the specific, fatal accident that led us to this story in the first place. Gallant’s pictures helped me realize that the official state patrol crash investigation was lax when it came to determining Lonnie Owens’ cause of death. Scene investigators concentrated only on brake failure as the cause of the accident. They never raised the issue of ‘cause of death.’ I wondered if Lonnie Owens could have survived the crash caused by brake failure if the cabinet had stayed on the wall. Was there a standard for screw length? Did anyone require or conduct front-end crash tests on motor homes?
The answer was no and no. The federal government asks that empty motor home frames be impact tested and has no requirements for testing after the top-heavy “house” is built. Construction standards are left up to the whims of the RV maker. Some manufacturers don’t even put on front-end bumpers.
Along with the investigations that aired on KIRO, we created a Web page full of exclusive content, including some film of an old Winnebago crash test. The most popular feature, however, is our tool that allows RV owners to check out NHTSA complaints about their favorite make of motor home. Putting the data online was a last-minute decision. I had to clean up the data first and then upload it to our Caspio Web database account.
In the end, we linked more than 200 deaths of RV passengers and drivers to suspect safety designs. The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association sent us a letter that denied any major engineering problems. The statement says, “NHTSA (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) hasn’t crash tested finished motor homes because they are fundamentally safe- there simply haven’t been enough deaths to warrant the cost of purchasing and testing these types of vehicles.”
Lonnie Owens’ family wasn’t too impressed with the RVIA’s response.
Chris Halsne is an investigative reporter with KIRO-Seattle. He can be reached at CHalsne@kirotv.com.
