In this image taken from video an SUV speeds past a young girl and others attending a Christmas parade and continues to drive through the parade, injuring multiple people, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021, in Waukesha, Wis. (Jesus Ochoa via AP)

If Ford were a gun company, our betters in politics and the legacy media would be wringing their hands calling for accountability and liability right now. Against all rational thinking, they’d be shrieking on every cable news network that Ford should be sued by the victims of last weekend’s vehicular attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where a ridiculously powerful, high-speed Ford Escape killed six and injured at least 60 innocent Christmas parade goers.

They’d tell us that Ford encouraged the criminal misuse of its Escape product through an advertising campaign full of toxic masculinity that explicitly suggests a buyer “MAKE YOUR ESCAPE” with this SUV.

Indeed, this appears to be precisely what the perpetrator chose to do in last weekend’s murderous rampage through the parade route.

Obviously the criminal purchased this particular vehicle as a result of Ford’s testosterone-charged advertising campaign and reckless naming choice. Ford is clearly negligent for creating such excitement relating to the potential illegal uses of this dangerous vehicle and for designing an SUV capable of inflicting such carnage.

Nobody needs a 3,500-pound steel missile — a weapon of mass destruction — just to commute to and from work.

As commuting is the only valid purpose for civilian motoring, single-trip, single-passenger vehicles such as electric scooters with biometric activation are the only form of vehicle that should be legal to sell or own.

Naturally, though, police officers, as civilians tasked with performing law enforcement duties (many of which every citizen has the right to perform), should be the only citizens with access to unrestricted vehicles such as fully automatic Ford Escapes. Also police are racist murderers, but only when we aren’t discussing vehicle laws.

Toppled chairs line W. Main St. in downtown Waukesha, Wis., after an SUV drove into a parade of Christmas marchers Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

Ford is clearly responsible for the criminal misuse of its product. Yes, the company is selling a legal product through legal means, but it is ultimately Ford’s duty and moral obligation to ensure that criminals or those with potential future criminal intent are not able to acquire its products, whether through a Ford dealership, a used car dealer, a private party sale, or even by theft.

Obviously Ford’s ability to monitor and control sales made after the initial transfer from Ford to a licensed dealer is entirely non-existent, and the company has no ability to control what customers do with its vehicles, but anything that happens after that initial dealer transfer is still ultimately Ford’s responsibility.

ford escape
An example of the irresponsible ad campaign Ford uses to sell these dangerous vehicles. Just look how fast! Nobody needs a 16 gallon horsepower throttle thing that goes up.

No longer can we exempt these cavalier manufacturers of dangerous vehicular weapons from liability for end users’ misuse of their products. We must end the immunity vehicle manufacturers have taken advantage of for too long. No other industry has complete immunity from liability for the misuse of their products like auto manufacturers do. This must end now. 

We should likewise identify and hold to account the gas station at which the Christmas parade massacre suspect purchased the gasoline that he so effectively used to murder innocent people. As irresponsibly dangerous as SUVs are, they are rendered impotent without the fuel to power them. The retailer that recklessly sold gasoline to this criminal must be held to account.

In fact, strict controls should be put in place related to the purchase of all gasoline, including background checks, special tax levies, education and permitting, and breathalyzer checks. Gasoline refiners and retailers need to be held financially and criminally liable any time a crime is enabled by the use of their products. For example, the drunk driving incident that made headlines just a few weeks ago.

If Ford were Remington, this is the level of insanity we’d have been subjected to since last Sunday afternoon. Case in point, and case in point…just two examples of hundreds. Attempts to bankrupt firearm manufacturers due to criminal misuse of their legal products were so rampant, in fact, that legislation had to be passed in 2005 to prevent this sort of disingenuous, bad-faith abuse of the tort system.

[Editor’s Note: neither Jeremy nor TTAG believes Ford is or should be liable for the criminal misuse of its vehicles. Obviously. Suggesting that is insane. Unhinged from reality. Yet this same argument persists when the topic is firearms, made and sold legally but misused in criminal fashion. Apologies to Ford for using them in this example; it was just a function of last weekend’s news.]

 

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38 COMMENTS

  1. Obviously Ford’s ability to monitor and control sales made after the initial transfer from Ford to a licensed dealer is entirely non-existent,

    Monitor yes unless subsequent transfers are done through a private transaction, control no… and it is almost impossible to create a “ghost” Escape which would require replacing a half dozen computer systems and destroying ALL of the serial numbers located in various places throughout the vehicle

    • And all those from the manufacturer, to the distributor, dealer, first owner, and every subsequent owner until the perpetrator are also guilty. And so is the state’s DMV equivalent for allowing the transfers to occur.

  2. “neither Jeremy nor TTAG believes Ford is or should be liable for the criminal misuse of its vehicles.”

    Oh okay. I was about to let you have it.

  5. I thought this kerfuffle was settled after Nice. Everyone should get a bicycle or a rickshaw!

  6. If the Democrats ever succeed in requiring every spring to be serialized, Ford would likely not even be legally capable of making vehicles anymore.

    • lol
      The Ruger Escape chambered in 5.56 with four 30rnd mags and heated leather grips. Auto-sensing red dot and self adjusting stock with presets are standard. Optional power steering 4×4 scope with matching leather exterior available on request.

  9. The military has humvees which are a SUV that holds 4 people, sooo a Ford Escape that is a SUV holds more than 4 people should be classified as a military style, high capacity assault vehicle…right?

  10. “Nobody needs a 16 gallon horsepower throttle thing that goes up.”

    LOL! My compact pickup truck has an 18 gallon horsepower throttle thing, with extra room under the canopy to keep rain and snow off all the things that go up. The antis will be coming after me any day now.

  14. The tree huggers/ Left wingers have always been anti-gun and anti-internal combustion engine. They have been trying to kill the automobile industry since the early 1970’s. They hate privately own transportation. Unless it’s a bicycle.

    • They hate privately own transportation. Unless it’s a bicycle.

      Guarantee THEY don’t ride bicycles around the country to do their protests…

  16. With all of the safety equipment hung on vehicles today I’m surprised the automatic braking system didn’t prohibit Brooks from running down all these people. Most modern vehicles automatically hit the brakes to keep one from rear-ending the vehicle in front or running over someone while backing if they’re in the beam.

    One of the reasons I’ll drive my old ’05 Park Ave until it drops- if I’m in a forming riot I’ll be able to at least move out of it and if I’m dragging a body or 2 underneath it’ll still go…

    • The ‘nanny’ devices are why I jumped on the 2018 I bought. I follow several high level car forums with insiders participating. Read about what was coming in the form of gov’t mandated devices such as lane assist. Creepy Joe Brandon mumbled the other day that Americans should buy EVs to save money and quit whining about gas prices…Well, $12,500 subsidy if produced in a UAW plant and you make under a certain annual income..I think $250,000. Taxpayers pay for this, then the unions send the money back as donations to the politicians of their choice. Round and round it goes. Such utter crap! Gov’t should not be in the car business.
      So question in my mind is why the air bags did not deploy? Not fast enough? I’ve seen a 100lb deer hit at 35mph cause deployment so now you have me pondering. It was a newer-ish Ford Escape I think.
      sorry, after thanksgiving rant…lol
      Remember, no motive for running over those people points to the actual motive.

    • The actual Escape used in the crime is the 1st model style that ended in 2012. It doesn’t have any of the new star wars equipment on it, just old school analog controls.

  18. I had a neighbor once who’s hobby was to find shells of cars, rusted out, heaps, especially from the 1940’s era, and resurrect them as these glorious and beautiful entity’s of their former selves. He did it all in his workshop garage in his back yard, fully functional, perfect interior, no more holes in the body, paint jobs so rich in color and deepness like a mirror, better than anything you could get today in finish quality. It would take him a year on just one car. Now it occurs to me he was building “Ghost Cars”

  20. There are already a huge number of TUVs (Terror Utility Vehicles) in the hands of the general public. Since there are already enough TUVs for legitimate purposes, Ford’s continued production is being marketed to the criminal element. Why else name a TUV Escape? The only thing they haven’t done is point out that the red color hides the blood.

  22. Only living creatures commit acts of violence. That’s people and animals. No non-living thing can commit an act of violence. Not a Ford Escape, not a steak knife, not a firearm.

    On the other hand, hammers do have a certain affection for thumbs.

    And there are those Glock pistols that just love popping off in cop holsters, especially going into cop holsters.

    But, those minor exceptions aside, the Ford Escape is as innocent as new fallen snow.

  23. As my stats for the Salt Lake Area have born out, there are many more criminal deaths due to vehicles than supposed studies on violence (especially those restricted just to guns) delve into. If you follow cases for the months it takes to find the data on criminal non-driver deaths, vehicular violence is significant. I doubt most doing studies on violence connect, or are capable of compiling those dots with the data they collect. Given that the privilege of driving a vehicle is not a right, and highly regulated, it’s obvious no amount of laws or oversight will decrease vehicular traffic as a public health threat by irresponsible to intently dangerous drivers.

  24. I can imagine the glee of Shannon Watts and her creepy pedophile convicted felon ridden group of minions when it was initially wrongly reported the driver of the SUV had fired shots….

    Shannon: (on phone) “George, did ya hear about Waukesha? Some guy drove his SUV into the parade and started shooting up everyone. Don’t know how many yet exactly, but he probably had an AR-15, the most power and destructive thing in the universe and at least hundreds are dead maybe a few thousand. Yep, this is the big one, the one we’ve been waiting for. Get to the office now and get our prepared boiler plate statements edited for this, we want to release a statement within the hour demanding the immediate confiscation of all guns.”

    George: (on phone) “Wow! Yep, sounds like the one we’ve been waiting for. Let me get the kid dressed and drop him off at the park where I got him before they realize he’s missing and I’ll get right on it.”

  25. We do need a national crusade against inane editor’s notes, though. We’re lucky Jonathan Swift’s publisher didn’t add a postscript. “Now, reader, Mr. Swift is not really in favor of making a fricassee of babies and eating them….”

    • Inane editor’s notes are a symptom of the fact that 25% of the comments would be ranting and raving against the premise of the article due to its sarcasm/analogy going completely undetected (see comment by “Literal J” near the top) and the fact that, as suggested in this very article, the tort system plays it pretty fast and loose sometimes and I have it on good authority that Ford has lawyers 😉

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