Bob Ellsworth is angry regarding the death of his son in a car accident.
"You can't be anything but angry," said Ellsworth who describes his feeling after finding out how and why his son Bobby died in a car accident back in 2003.
His son died when the airbags in his pickup truck failed to deploy. They couldn't go off because they were not there. They had been replaced by paper.
The pickup had been in an earlier accident involving the prior owner of the car. The airbags deployed for that accident.
The car was wrecked and sold as salvage. The man who bought it, rebuilt the car and instead of replacing the airbags, he simply packed paper where the airbags were supposed to go. Plastic was then glued over where the airbags should have been and he re-sold the car.
"It was an outrageous, greedy act that was done for profit," said Ellsworth, "At the expense of my son."
Bobby's family sued the man who rebuilt and sold the car. On Monday, a jury announced a verdict of $15 million dollars for the family.
Ellsworth has been working with consumer groups which have sued the Justice Department to force the government to develop a National Data Bank of wrecked and salvaged vehicles. They've won their case and now the data will be available to the public in March.
"We don't want any more deaths like this to happen to anyone else,* said Ellsworth.
