From Avoidable Tragedy
When Mary Ellsworth awoke one morning, she noticed her son Bobby's double-cab Toyota was still in the driveway. He must have slept over at a friend's house, she thought. Mary and her husband, Bob, had always urged Bobby to stay put when he was tired and out late. "Thank God he didn't drive," she told herself.It was July 2003, a mere month after two milestones: Bobby's 18th birthday and his high school graduation. Mary was pleased that her outdoors-loving son was having a near-perfect summer, fishing and working as a groundskeeper at a golf course.
Her joy ended, though, when she answered the phone at 8 a.m. It was the San Diego medical examiner; Bobby was in the county morgue.
The Ellsworths learned that Bobby and 18-year-old Waylon Blocker had been visiting friends outside San Diego. Bobby was riding shotgun in Blocker's pickup truck. At 1:50 a.m., they headed home to Jamul, California, on a two-lane rural road. Blocker crossed the center line and slammed head-on into a BMW with a driver and three passengers inside. Everyone sustained serious injuries; only Bobby's were fatal.
But it was one shocking discovery that "really put the knife in our hearts, "says Bob Ellsworth. "The state police told us no airbags deployed in the truck because there were no airbags. Instead the compartments were stuffed with paper. Everyone on the scene -- the police, EMTs, firefighters -- couldn't believe what they were seeing."
Bobby Ellsworth was the victim of airbag fraud. In many cases, crooked body shops looking to make a quick buck replace a deployed airbag with a used one or the wrong type. Or, as in the Ellsworth case, the compartment is filled with junk, literally, then resealed. And tragically, even though Bobby wasn't wearing a seat belt, had there been an airbag in that truck, "it would have saved his life, "says Kenneth Alvin Solomon, PhD, a forensic scientist with the Institute of Risk and Safety Analysis.
Although there aren't reliable statistics on how often this deadly scam occurs, "it's bad and it's getting worse," says Aaron Cobb of the Special Investigations Unit for Farmers Insurance. Consider these tragic cases:
In 2003 a driver was seriously injured, and her mother, who was in the front passenger seat, died in a head-on collision. The car was a salvaged vehicle that had been rebuilt, but the driver had no way of knowing that someone had removed the driver-side airbag. What's more, the passenger-side airbag was inoperative -- it had deployed in a previous accident and simply been jammed back in the compartment.
Det. Tom Burke of the NYPD Auto Crimes Division remembers a grim investigation in 2005 involving five teens on the Throgs Neck Expressway in New York City whose used car veered off the road and hit a tree. Two died. The owner didn't know the vehicle had been in an accident that caused the airbags to deploy. "Whoever fixed the car bought the airbags off the Internet and didn't install them correctly, "Burke says. "If the job had been done right, these kids wouldn't have died. People believe replacing an airbag is like replacing any other part in a car."
It's not. An airbag is designed for a particular make, model, year and location in the car. After a bag has deployed, it should be replaced with a new one and connected to the designated onboard computer by an expert.
"Getting the right airbag placed properly into a car is almost like neurosurgery," cautions James Quiggle of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. That's why the Automotive Occupant Restraint Council (AORC) recommends using only the original car manufacturer's replacement parts. Yet if you go on the Internet, you'll find several thousand airbags for sale; on eBay, there are starting bids as low as 99 cents.
Cons for Cash
"Every alarm bell says airbag fraud is widespread, persistent and deadly,"says Quiggle. You're vulnerable to these swindles whenever you buy a used vehicle or send a wrecked one for repairs. After a con artist makes the switch, he pockets the insurance payment intended for the purchase of new airbags. Brand-new, a single bag can cost $1,000 or more. One job, in which the two main front airbags deploy, could net a crook several thousand dollars.
It's not impossible for these used airbags to work, according to the AORC, but there are significant concerns: "Airbags may have been exposed to conditions, such as excessive heat or floodwaters [electrical and safety systems could be compromised], that can result in unacceptable performance. There is currently no test to verify that such exposure has not occurred and that the airbags will perform acceptably."
New vehicles must meet federal safety standards, but previously owned vehicles aren't subject to similar scrutiny. "Except in a few states, there's no law requiring that deployed airbags be replaced, other than your garden-variety fraud statute," says Rosemary Shahan, founder of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS).
Remember Bobby Ellsworth's friend Waylon Blocker? His parents asked an acquaintance, Arnold Parra, to get a truck for their son at a salvage auction. The truck had been in a previous front-end collision in which the airbags had deployed, according to the Ellsworths' lawyer, Julia Haus. She contends in a suit against Parra that he would have known that because he rebuilt the wrecked truck. Parra is currently facing multiple lawsuits in this case; he's been charged with wrongful death and gross negligence. Parra's lawyer, Robert Bonito, says his client is not culpable, that he didn't know the airbags had deployed. "The vehicle came with the airbag compartments sealed," he says. "No one knows how they got stuffed with paper."
Missing Facts
Consumers currently have no way of knowing the full history of a used car. Before buying, many turn to services such as Carfax and AutoCheck, which report whether the vehicle was in an accident or flood or was stolen, or if the airbags ever deployed. Consumer advocates, however, warn that those databases don't always receive the most up-to-date information. One reason: Insurance companies and some DMVs won't share damage claims data with the history services.
Lisa Thompson discovered how costly a reporting delay can be. In April 2006 she and her 19-year-old son, Chris, found a car on craigslist. The seller told Chris another potential buyer's mechanic had inspected the car. Chris test-drove it and ran a Carfax report. "Everything checked out great," says Thompson.
The car broke down the day after they bought it. Their mechanic told them it was a rebuilt wreck that would require $4,000 worth of repairs. So what went wrong? Chris took the seller at his word, and Carfax hadn't yet received documentation that the car had been totaled in a previous accident.
The issues, Thompson learned, weren't just mechanical: "The driver's airbag was a salvaged one that the guy had slapped in there, but he never replaced the system's computer, so the airbag wasn't functional. "To cover his deceit, the seller removed the dashboard warning light that would have signaled something was amiss.
The seller was slick but was no match for Thompson, a crime analyst for the Concord, California, Police Department. It took eight months for her to track down the original owner who'd sold the car as salvage after wrecking it. He provided information and photos that helped Thompson win a judgment against the crook who rebuilt and sold her the car.
Fighting Back
No question, consumers must be vigilant. For starters, motorists should demand that their legislators pass tough laws making it a specific crime to knowingly install fake or nonfunctioning airbags in vehicles. "Airbag scams are literally life-and-death swindles that can kill people on a routine trip to the grocery store," says Quiggle of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. "Every driver should step into a car knowing they have one of the most important safety defenses in place, the airbag."Further compounding the risk: There's no uniformity in how states define salvaged or junked vehicles. That creates an opportunity for dishonest dealers and rebuilders to have titles "washed" of their relevant history by moving a vehicle from state to state.
The National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS) is designed to put a stop to this illegal activity. Authorized in 1992, NMVTIS allows states to instantly verify titles electronically. That means a car declared a total loss in one state cannot have its title washed of that label in another.
Currently, 34 states supply information to NMVTIS; of those, only 13 have computer systems set up to access the data immediately. But every state needs to implement the system to effectively eliminate title fraud. Otherwise, the 16 states (and the District of Columbia) that are not participating will continue to be disproportionately targeted by con artists. "It's unbelievable that it has taken 16 years to get this far, given the stakes for families," says Rosemary Shahan of CARS.
Adds Jason King of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, "It's important for consumers to know that vehicle fraud crimes, whether they involve airbag fraud, title washing or something else, are high profit and very low risk for criminals. If consumers had a fully implemented title information system in every state, we could help save them between $4 billion and $11 billion. That's a huge benefit for a system that would cost no more than $11 million to fully implement."
Last year, at the urging of legitimate auto dealers who want to ensure they're not putting families in unsafe used cars, companion bills were introduced in the House and Senate. This legislation requires that totaled, flood-damaged and stolen cars be permanently recorded in vehicle history databases and that insurance companies consistently report cases of airbag deployment to the public. Congress plans to take up the issue in the spring.
"What's frustrating," says Quiggle, "is that innocent people will keep dying until fraud fighters can uncover enough hard data to make airbag schemes an urgent national safety issue."
How junked cars end up back on the road with used airbags -- or none at all.
● After a front-end collision and airbag deployment, the owner's insurance company declares the car totaled and submits the title to the state, where the claim is filed. The title is branded a total loss.
● The insurer sends the car to a salvage auction. A crooked rebuilder buys the car, makes cosmetic repairs and replaces the deployed airbags with stolen or used ones -- or with junk (cans, sneakers, rags).
● What's total loss? States disagree, so a rebuilder washes the title of its history by sending the car to a state that has more lenient standards and where it's easier to get a clean title.
● The car is advertised as being in good condition.
● The buyer has problems with the car and gets it inspected, or the car is in an accident.
● The buyer then learns the car was a salvaged wreck. The airbags don't work or they're missing altogether.
Airbags are part of a complex system controlled by an onboard computer. A sensor detects a collision force and sends a signal to the inflation system, igniting a propellant that burns rapidly enough to produce nitrogen gas. This causes the thin, folded nylon bag to inflate and burst from its storage compartment, slowing an occupant's forward motion in a fraction of a second.
Is It Working?
When you turn on your car's ignition, the airbag system undergoes a self-diagnostic check. In most vehicles, a dashboard light comes on briefly, then goes out. If the light doesn't come on, or if it comes on and stays on, have a certified airbag mechanic take a look. Find a certified airbag mechanic with the ASE Blue Seal Recognition Program.
Get familiar with how the cover looks and feels. If you need to have airbags replaced after an accident, the color of the new cover should be more vibrant than the rest of the interior. If it's faded, or if the color doesn't match, you may have received a salvaged airbag.
Important: Don't open the airbag compartment yourself. You could be injured or damage the airbag system.
After An Accident
The National Insurance Crime Bureau advises you to:
1. Use a reputable auto collision repair shop that employs mechanics certified by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE).
2. Check the invoice to ensure the repair shop purchased the airbag from the manufacturer.
3. Inspect the airbag before installation. It should be packaged in a sealed container from the manufacturer.
4. If you suspect fraud or theft, call the National Insurance Crime Bureau's hotline: 800-835-6422.