Honda Odyssey owners warned feds before Ohio teen was crushed in third-row seat
Weeks before Ohio teenager Kyle Plush died in his parked Honda Odyssey, federal safety regulators received a dire warning from an alarmed parent about a possible safety defect in the same minivan model.
The Oklahoma owner of a 2011 Odyssey said there was a chronic latching problem with their third-row seat and urged a recall. The seat wouldn't lock in place and would suddenly flip over if someone sat or leaned on it.
"(It) does not latch properly. The seat falls backwards when my 8-year-old son sits on it," warned the vehicle owner. "It doesn't matter if the vehicle is in motion or not. The seat goes in a backward motion when someone is sitting in it with the pressure of their back leaning on it. I feel this could be dangerous and needs to have a recall."
It was more than dangerous for Plush. It was deadly.
More: Enquirer Honda Odyssey investigation: Five things we found
More: Are you a Honda Odyssey owner? Help us report the story.
A Seven Hills high school student in Cincinnati, Plush died on April 10 when he was trapped in his minivan after the seat unlatched and flipped over on him. Pinned upside down against the closed hatchback, the seat back pressed against his chest, making it hard to breathe. He died of asphyxiation.
Federal officials with America's top cop for vehicle safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, didn't see a pattern. There were only four complaints in the year before Plush died:
Months earlier, the same agency had boldly moved to protect motorists from flipping hazards in the Honda Odyssey – connected with the vehicle's second-row seats. Multiple recalls were issued after federal officials received four complaints over the previous year.
Plush's death appears to be the first of its kind, but it was preceded by a string of warnings made to the federal agency charged with preventing auto fatalities, a Cincinnati Enquirer investigation shows.
The agency has received nearly 178 Honda Odyssey seating complaints over the years – a quarter of them concerning seat stability. One out of five stability cases were problems with the third-row seats – none of them subject to a federal recall or further investigation.
NHTSA says no further investigation is needed. Honda says it sees nothing that indicates the Plush tragedy is anything more than a freak accident.
Meanwhile, local investigators inspecting Plush's minivan indicated they had difficulty getting the seat to latch in place – and that it "would appear" locked but then "rotate freely," according to documents obtained by The Enquirer.
The findings come after years of criticism heaped on NHTSA – lambasted for its slow response to deadly auto scandals of recent years, including Takata airbags and GM ignition switch failures, which were collectively blamed for hundreds of deaths.
The agency has been criticized for relying too heavily on automakers for information, for keeping poor records and its failure to analyze data and spot threats. This year, the agency faces fresh criticism for its failure to handle record-level recalls in the past few years.
There was no recall before Plush's death. But there were signs of trouble.
A young life cut short, calls for further investigation
Sixteen-year-old Kyle Plush was supposed to play tennis after school.
Looking to get his athletic bag out of the minivan, Plush climbed in from the side and either sat or leaned on the third-row bench seat when it flipped backward.
Pinned inside against the tinted rear windshield, no one in the busy student parking lot saw or heard him. The 80-pound fixture was pressed against Plush's ribcage with added force from the weight of his lower body on top of the seat.
Authorities believe his hands were also pinned by his sides. Plush suffered from kyphoscoliosis (sideways and outward curvature of the spine) and investigators think he wasn't strong enough to push the seat up and back.
Just 5-foot-2 and 118 pounds, Plush was a small guy but reacted quickly.
With his smartphone in his pants pocket, Plush had the presence of mind to call 911 using voice command. Plush told the emergency operator at 3:16 p.m. he was trapped "at Seven Hills" in a van and "going to die."
But neither Plush nor the operator could hear one another. Officers were dispatched to the sprawling school campus but had minimal information. The police didn't have the technology to pinpoint the exact location of the call.
Audibly struggling for breath, Plush frantically called back at 3:35 p.m.
"I probably don't have much time left, so tell my mom that I love her if I die," he said, according to the tape of the 911 call.
But the operator couldn't hear Plush. Police left the campus after they couldn't find any sign of trouble.
The youth's body was found in the minivan by Plush's father that night.
Hamilton County and city officials have concluded the police officers and 911 operators followed procedures. The city has also pledged to overhaul its emergency call system.
The Plush family has advocated upgrading the nation's 911 emergency system. Family members did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.
While much scrutiny has been on the failed response, little has emerged about what caused the emergency in the first place.
In a statement, NHTSA said the agency doesn't believe the cause was an auto defect.
“When the agency first learned of the tragedy that occurred in Cincinnati earlier this year involving the Honda Odyssey minivan, NHTSA worked closely with local authorities and Honda to fully understand what happened," the agency said. "Based on the available information, including internal data analysis, the agency has not found evidence of a vehicle safety defect trend."
NHTSA said part of its review included past Odyssey complaints but didn't elaborate what other steps it took. It said it would "continue to monitor complaints" and "take further steps as appropriate.”
Agency officials declined to explain what "available information" informed their decision. They refused to say whether they sent anyone to inspect the vehicle or which local agencies they communicated with during the review.
But at least one local expert who inspected Plush's vehicle noticed a possible seat problem.
A doctor and biomedical engineer hired by local officials to examine the minivan disclosed the bench seat that killed the boy may not have latched properly. He said it took multiple tries to securely lock in place, according to a memo obtained by The Enquirer.
"In several instances, the latch would appear to be locked, however, the rear seat would rotate freely... (it) would not lock the seat base into position," wrote the University of Cincinnati's George Shaw. He was hired by the prosecutor's office to assess how Plush died in the vehicle. He added the latches showed no signs of damage and the seat would finally lock into place by "pushing it down forcefully."
The latch might not have been the only problem, Shaw speculated. A tire might have been under the seat preventing the latch from engaging.
It's not clear if NHTSA has seen Shaw's report.
Meanwhile, Honda officials say they haven't discovered any widespread problem with Odyssey's third-row seating.
Company officials declined to discuss Honda's complaint numbers – either totals or seating related – noting such information is proprietary. They noted Honda shares complaint information that is required with regulators, including fatalities and incidents causing injuries.
The company hasn't inspected Plush's vehicle.
"It's possible to find complaints regarding nearly any vehicle in our historical lineup, especially with any part of the car that can be adjusted or moved by vehicle owners, like seats, doors," Honda spokesman Chris Martin said. "We do not individually investigate every complaint sent through NHTSA's early warning database or reported directly to us. Both Honda and NHTSA look for patterns in order to determine if there is a concern that merits further investigation... Neither NHTSA or Honda have seen such a pattern."
Multiple safety advocates were appalled NHTSA isn't digging deeper.
"That's a defect. When it seems to be latched but it's not, that's a safety defect," said Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS), a nonprofit advocacy group in Sacramento, California. "The fact that they have a series of complaints also raises a bunch of red flags."
Sean Kane, the founder of Safety Research & Strategies, a consulting firm in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, said a single nonfatal complaint can be enough to warrant a recall, let alone a fatal accident. He said Plush's death begs further scrutiny.
"There should be a formal defect investigation," Kane said. "(NHTSA's) job as an agency is not to wait for bodies to stack up."
'I think I'm going to cry now – I have a teenager in high school'
The Enquirer has found more than a dozen warnings about the Honda Odyssey's third-row seating for models made between 1999 and 2012. Some complained the seats were loose, rusting or wouldn't latch, while others noted incidents where heavy seats suddenly slammed down or flipped out of place.
Cristie Escandon, now 48, was a busy mom of two little girls in 2004 moving from Florida to Virginia when she had a mishap with her 2003 Odyssey. Getting something out of the back, the bench seat slammed down on her right arm – breaking it.
Alarmed it could have hurt one of her girls, she notified federal safety officials the same day.
"I am writing you with much pain and difficulty. Today while I was attempting to pull my bench seat out of the storage well, it malfunctioned and slammed down with full weight and crushed my arm," she wrote. "I went to the doctor and after X-raying it, found out that it is broken! I have been in severe pain all day... I am appalled that these bench seats have no kind of safety mechanism to keep them from falling full force, injuring people...
"I am insisting that you put some sort of safety catch lock on these seats immediately!" She concluded. "Not only could other people be severely injured like me, but a child could die from such an incident."
NHTSA typically redacts consumer names from complaints but failed to do so in Escandon's case, which allowed The Enquirer to contact her.
Now living outside Memphis, Tennessee, Escandon heard about Kyle Plush's death on the national news and immediately wondered if there was a link with her accident from years ago. Back then, though she was worried about what could have happened to her little daughters.
"I think I'm going to cry now – I have a teenager in high school and another girl in college," Escandon told The Enquirer.
Escandon vividly recalled the incident that complicated her move while her husband, a Navy pilot, was serving offshore.
"That put a monkey wrench in my whole life then, but I was terrified that it could have happened to one of my daughters," she said.
She doesn't remember anyone from the agency ever following up with her or even confirming the receipt of her complaint.
Other complaints also reported an injury or expressed alarm:
NHTSA officials said only five third-row complaints cited by The Enquirer were from the same Odyssey design and "did not expose a similar issue."
An agency under fire, facing recurring questions
NHTSA has been harshly criticized for its slow response to multiple auto safety scandals in the past few years. The agency has been the subject of several government audits that have cited lax reporting guidelines, a lack of procedures, poor record keeping and inadequate analysis capabilities.
In 2015, for example, the agency slapped Honda with a record $70 million fine for its failure to report more than 1,700 injuries and deaths between 2003 and 2014, which the automaker blamed on "inadvertent data entry or computer programming errors."
The agency said it was sending a “message,” but the fine didn’t hide that Honda had under-reported safety issues for more than a decade.
An audit later that year by the Inspector General's office at the Department of Transportation blamed poorly-written rules spelling out the information required of automakers, which allowed omissions to slip by. An agency director admitted to inspectors they relied on an "honor system" with automakers.
NHTSA disclosed to the Enquirer it is hiring more staff, but otherwise declined to discuss ongoing reforms – some taking years to implement.
Sam Rosenstiel contributed