Fifty-nine people have been killed and hundreds have been injured in Yamaha Rhino rollovers and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering stepping in to address the threat to public safety.
Those were two of the findings aired in a CBS Evening News investigation Tuesday on the dangers of this off-road vehicle that has sold more than 150,000 units since being introduced in 2003. Reporter Armen Keteyian’s four-month probe uncovered 440 Rhino-related injuries and deaths — often in rollovers at slow speeds on flat ground.
Our law firm has filed lawsuits against Yamaha Motor Corp. USA alleging defects in the design of the Yamaha Rhino ATV’s caused the accidents. Our own Eric Hageman has been appointed by a federal judge to the plaintiff’s steering committee in Yamaha Rhino litigation pending in Kentucky. Hageman says the CBS findings support his belief that the only way to protect consumers from Rhino accidents is to remove the machine from the market.
Keteyian interviewed Inez Tenenbaum, the newly appointed leader of the Consumer Product Safety Commission as saying her agency is investigating the problem and considering some kind of intervention that could be mandatory.
Said Tenenbaum: “It’s very high risk. This vehicle has a high center of gravity and it will turn over.”
The CBS report, which includes video of a Yamaha Rhino tipping over in a dealer’s paved parking lot, uncovered documents that indicated Yamaha’s knowledge of a rollover problem surfaced at least 15 months before the product was introduced. That’s when the vice president of Rhino development at Yamaha suffered a foot injury in a road test of a prototype, CBS reported.
Predictably, Yamaha USA told CBS it believes the ATV is safe and reliable.
The report focused on a 16-year-old California boy who lost his left hand in a Rhino rollover while he was belted into the vehicle and was wearing a helmet. Justin Miller told CBS that his family would have never bought the Yamaha Rhino if it knew of its accident history.
To contact our lawyers about a Yamaha Rhino lawsuit, please call 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free) or submit our Rhino rollover free consultation form. We don’t get paid unless you win.
