Did elderly driving or a malfunctioning Lincoln cause Paulding crash ?

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.

It’s only natural when accidents happen for us to look for something or someone to blame.

We found both fairly quickly in the case of Marlene Wilbur, the 81-year-old Marietta woman who plowed her car into five pedestrians at the Paulding County Courthouse last month, killing one.

Wilbur was arrested and charged with second-degree vehicular homicide and that might have been the end of it except her age ignited a public debate about the elderly and when might be a good time for them to give up driving.

Police suggested Wilbur may have mistaken the gas pedal for the brakes.

That might be true but there was something in Wilbur’s statement to the police that day that suggests the crash might have had less to do with her driving ability and more to do with the condition of her 2001 Lincoln Town car.

Wilbur told police she turned right into a parking space and doesn’t remember what happened after that except that her vehicle “did something.”

That got me thinking about a conversation I had shortly after Wilbur’s accident with another woman, Eileen Silverman of Sandy Springs.

Five years ago, Silverman, 79, had just enjoyed lunch with a dear friend visiting from California at Petite Mason when her 1998 Lincoln Continental “did something” that nearly killed the two of them.

“It was May 4, 2010. I remember it like it was yesterday,” she said recently. “I turned the ignition on, put the car in gear and it took off with my foot on the brake.”

Desperate, Silverman put both her feet on the brake pedal and pressed as hard as she could to stop, but the Lincoln kept going through a fence at the back of the property, down an embankment and into a tree.

“The tree stopped us,” she said. “Someone in a nearby apartment complex called the ambulance.”

Silverman had a broken nose, a cut lip and bruises everywhere. Her friend’s neck was broken.

When she read the story about Wilbur’s crash last month, Silverman said memories of her accident came rushing back.

“It irritated me,” she said of the story. “Two people who were not in the car with that lady said she stepped on the gas instead of the brake. My heart bleeds for the person who died and the injured, but it bleeds for the 81-year-old woman, too.

“Here they already got the poor thing convicted and it’s probably not her fault. If they don’t investigate that car there’s no justice in the world.”

Even though Silverman says an engineer confirmed “physical evidence” supporting her contention that the throttle stuck, propelling her Lincoln forward, the attorney she hired told her it was too late to sue Ford. Her car, a 1998, was 12 years old. Her insurance ended up paying for her friend’s hospital bills.

That Lincoln was Silverman's dream car. But a check of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website suggests Lincolns have been the subject of a lot people's nightmares.

Neither Lincoln model has warranted an NHTSA investigation, but dozens of owners have filed complaints with the agency in which they describe sudden acceleration issues, some of them on as many as three different occasions.

Just two years ago, a class action suit against Ford was filed on behalf of consumers from 14 states who claim defects have resulted in problems with unintended acceleration in Lincoln Town cars manufactured from 2002 to 2010.

Adam Levit, who leads the Grant & Eisenhofer law firm’s Consumer Practice Group, said attorneys are in the middle of discovery.

“Ford is inspecting their cars. We’re conferring with our experts and look forward to trying this case before a jury because we’re very confident in our claims,” he said. “The discovery tells a very compelling story of what happened, that there is a known defect in every single car that’s implicated in the years of litigation.”

Whitney Eichinger, a spokeswoman for Ford Motor Company, said she isn’t aware of any complaints beyond the suit but said the NHTSA has investigated alleged unintended accelerations many times over many years and has concluded that driver error is the predominant cause of these events.

“NHTSA’s work is far more scientific and trustworthy than work done by personal injury lawyers and their paid experts,” she said. “In rare situations, vehicle factors, such as floor mats or broken mechanical components, can interfere with proper throttle operation, and manufacturers have addressed these rare events in field service actions.”

Silverman said that while her time may have passed to hold Ford accountable for what happened to her and her friend, she hopes what she has shared will help others who find themselves in a similar situation.

“They can activate the emergency brake or drop the car in neutral and turn the ignition off,” she said. “I wish I’d known that, but I didn’t.