53-year-old Dennis Ralich was killed when he was thrown from his Honda all-terrain vehicle.

Ralich’s death is puzzling since he was known as a skilled and responsible driver.  The road was flat at the scene of the accident, and investigators believe that speed was not an issue.

Steven Ralich, Dennis’s son, found his father’s ATV rolled over near a soybean field.  He later found Dennis’s body in a soybean row.  Emergency personnel arrived at the scene but were unable to revive Ralich.  It was concluded that Ralich died instantly from the multiple injuries he suffered.

The county Sheriff’s Department is conducting an investigation.  The department is looking at Ralich’s ATV for signs of mechanical failure, but they have not ruled out the possibility that Ralich hit an animal.

The county coroner, said, “There was some damage to the ATV from overturning, and there may have been some other issues with the machine.”

ATVs are notoriously top-heavy and poorly designed. If you or someone you love has been killed or injured by one of these dangerous machines, please contact an experienced Texas car wreck attorney for professional insight.

Many adults, teenagers, and children in America have been left permanently disabled in rollover accidents involving the Yamaha Rhino Utility Terrain Vehicle.

Many have been killed.

A group of safety advocates and victims called for basic changes in the Rhino’s design to increase the safety of the passengers in the case of rollovers.  The report is titled “Citizen Report on UTV Vehicle Hazards.”  The report mainly focuses on the Yamaha Rhino and has been sent to several Committees including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Recreational Off Highway Vehicle Association as well as several Congress members.

The report calls for full doors and netting to be installed.  It also calls for design changes such as roll bar padding, increasing the axle width, and lowering its center of gravity to help prevent flipping.

The Rhino was not equipped with doors or safety netting to contain the passengers.

Yamaha announced that they would install half-doors on any 2004 – 2007 Rhinos for free but never issued a recall.  About half of the 120,000 Rhinos have not been upgraded.  People say that the half-doors are inadequate to provide the proper safety.

These vehicles are notorously unstable at the best of times. If you or someone you love has been injured by one of these contraptions, please see an experienced Texas vehicle accident attorney for professional insight.

According to a story published in the Detroit Free Press, Federal auto safety regulators have launched a probe into more than 1 million Ford Motor Co. cars and trucks over reports of tires leaking air because of bad valve stems made by a Chinese company.

Ford said that its look into the stems, used in a majority of its North American vehicles, uncovered a low rate of problems and no safety risks. But safety advocates said any threat of sudden loss of air to tires should be deemed serious enough for a recall.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had already launched a separate investigation in May into 23 million replacement valve stems manufactured by Shanghai Baolong Automotive Corp. in 2006. The agency has found 4,767 complaints related to those valve stems, including one fatal crash of a 1998 Ford Explorer after a tire failure.

NHTSA’s preliminary probe into Ford vehicles covers 1,050,000 vehicles from a dozen 2007 models; company spokesman Wes Sherwood said the stems may have been used in other models not named by the agency.

The vehicles with the valve stems named by NHTSA include the Ford F-150, Mustang, Edge, Fusion, Expedition, Explorer, Focus and Escape, and the Mercury Grand Marquis, MKX, MKZ and Milan.

NHTSA said it has 37 complaints of bad valve stems from Ford vehicles; in 23 cases, the same vehicle had more than one bad stem, and in 11 instances, the air leak was severe enough to damage the tire.

None of the complaints to NHTSA in the most recent investigation allege any crashes or injuries because of the problem. Several owners said they were alerted to the problem by the vehicle’s tire-pressure warning system.