Media Myth: Nine Worst Business Stories
(of the Last 50 Years)

6. Rolling Jeeps
 

     “I’m only going 8 to 10 miles an hour,” Morley Safer said from behind the wheel of a Jeep in a Dec. 21, 1980, CBS “60 Minutes” broadcast. “But this is what can happen when the Jeep makes a J-turn at 22 miles an hour,” he added, as a video showed the vehicle flipping and rolling on top of dummy passengers.

     In 1980 the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a group funded by auto insurers, released statistics on the Jeep CJ-5 suggesting it was prone to roll over under “normal” driving circumstances.

     The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post ran the story, but the visual aids in Safer’s “60 Minutes” report were perhaps the most stunning – showing Jeeps turning over and tossing dummy passengers to the pavement, in what was implied to be normal driving circumstances.

     The IIHS report, obtained from the group’s archives by the Business & Media Institute, shows that the group’s researchers ran a total of 435 tests to obtain eight rollovers. One of the Jeeps was tested at least 87 times before it rolled over. It was then reconfigured and tested another 72 times before it rolled over again.

     More than a year later, American Motors Corp. was still suffering from image problems due to the reports. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 1982 that Jeep sales were “already 50 percent below” 1979 numbers when the report aired, and they “sank to about 65 percent below that rate” in 1981.

     The Journal also reported AMC’s side of the story, noting the manufacturer was questioning the validity of the IIHS study as well as other studies suggesting Jeeps were more likely than other SUVs to roll over. “The auto maker contends that the driving patterns were unrealistic because steering was extreme, speed was prolonged, and brakes weren’t applied,” it reported.

     The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration agreed. In a 1981 internal memo, the NHTSA critiqued Dynamic Science Incorporated, which conducted the IIHS tests, for using “abnormal test conditions and unrealistic maneuvers … generated by an automatic control device which … was programmed to provide input not entirely representative of driver input,” according to the book “The Liability Maze” by Peter Huber, a lawyer who is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

     Unfortunately for auto manufacturers, stories like these can create stereotypes that live on even after the stories are debunked. The “60 Minutes” report and the IIHS report it highlighted, though discredited, are still being used to tarnish Jeep’s reputation.

     A 2002 PBS “Frontline” special on the dangers of SUVs cited the reports. After outlining the rollover risk without bothering to mention the tests were discredited, the narrator noted, “Despite the rollover risk, Americans flocked to the Jeep.” Maybe it was because Americans realized Jeeps weren’t as dangerous as the media made them out to be.

     A 2004 book, “High and Mighty: SUVs – The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way,” cited the CBS report, also without mentioning that the study had been criticized by vehicle safety experts

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