Profits before people

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

It's all about money. That's what it has been about from day one - money saved, money earned, money pocketed by corporate executives, money reaped to make shareholders smile.

Dollar signs filled the headlines last week.

"Atlanta jury orders GM to pay $105M for teen's death in truck crash; GM to pay $105M for negligence in truck death."

The market price for a life - $105.2 million.

There were no pictures of Shannon Moseley, of course, the boy who burned to death at 17. There was a blurred shot of his mother and father in the courtroom, after hearing the verdict, heads bowed, forever heartbroken.

It's a pyrrhic victory. The Moseleys win, but the Moseleys lose, too.

But the news didn't focus on this human tragedy, it focused solely on the economics.

"GM's stock today closed down 1 3/8 at 37 3/4 on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained almost 43 points," the New York Times wrote. "Already reeling from more than $10 billion in losses in the last seven quarters and the resignation of Chairman Robert C. Stempel last year..."

And on it went.

The first time I heard about the death of Shannon Moseley was on television. Cameras were set up in a typical suburban kitchen, recording the conversation of typical suburban parents turned atypical overnight. Shannon had wanted a truck since he was a little boy. That's what his father said. So he bought him a red one, a 1985 GMC Sierra pickup truck for his birthday or his graduation, I don't remember which. A picture of Shannon grinning, standing next to his truck filled the screen. Then the camera cut back to the father, bewildered, shattered, who said something about how he never imagined he was buying a gift that would kill his only son.

My son has a truck, too. We bought it for him - used not new, white not red, a Mitsubishi, not a GM, but a truck just the same. We might have bought a GM, if it has been in the lot that day. Circumstances, timing, a role of the dice. So much of life is determined by chance.

The cameras cut from the Moseleys to the executives at GM. "Our trucks are safe," they intoned. "There is nothing wrong with our `sidesaddle' design."

But the numbers tell another story. More than 200 people have died in full-sized Chevrolet and GMC pick-ups, made between 1973 and 1987. There have been 130 other lawsuits.

Next were the televised demonstrations: Three GM pickup trucks with side-mounted fuel tanks were deliberately struck on the side while the cameras rolled.

The first truck took the hit and its gas tank remained intact. The second's gas tank burst on impact and caught fire, but slowly, so that someone uninjured by the crash might have time to escape. The third truck was hit and exploded.

This is what happened to Shannon Moseley's truck.

Moseley wasn't injured by the impact of the car that hit him. An autopsy showed no bruises, no contusions, no broken bones on the boy. A drunken driver, ran a red light, smashed into Moseley's truck, and he survived.

But then his truck burst into flames.

A police officer at the scene said he heard the boy screaming for help, screaming in agony, as he burned to death.

GM offered to settle with the Moseleys out of court, but they refused. They didn't want anyone else to die the way their son had. So they took on the behemoth, and they got a break. A former GM safety engineer who had testified in more than 15 previous cases that the pickups were safe, testified against GM.

He told the court that the company had known for years that its design was flawed.

Despite last week's verdict, GM continues to refuse to recall these trucks. "General Motors remains confident that a full examination by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the technical issues in this matter will bear out our contention that the 1973-1987 full-size pickup trucks do not have a safety-related defect," the company said in its statement.

Translated, this means that GM continues to put profit before the safety of people, and refuses to spend its money on a recall unless ordered to. NHTSA has both the power and the moral obligation to do exactly this, and should before another person dies.