NHTSA Complaint #11589471 — 2013 FORD ESCAPE

I would like to alert you to a "near miss" situation regarding my 2013 Ford Escape Titanium automobile which very nearly resulted in a car rollover while driving at 65 mph on the freeway. My wife was driving our 2013 Escape on the freeway. Suddenly, the left rear lower control arm cross support arm assembly Ford Part No. CV6Z*5500*L broke into two pieces. When this happened, the car immediately darted to the right because the left rear tire was no longer pointing straight ahead. Her reaction was to compensate by steering to the left. At that point in time, the car came up on two wheels and very nearly rolled over. After that, the car swerved back and forth until she could stop. It was extremely fortunate that she was in the center lane of a three lane wide freeway when this happened and there were no cars to her immediate right or left. After getting the car stopped she saw that the left rear wheel was clearly pointing in the wrong direction. We had the car towed home and since I generally handle all of my own automotive repairs in my home garage, I jacked the car up and noticed the broken cross support arm assembly. I removed the broken part and examined the failure surfaces. I happen to be a mechanical engineer with 40 years of mechanical design experience and I immediately recognized the classic symptoms of a metal fatigue failure. I have attached a series of photographs documenting the failure. The fracture surface consists of rust along the cracked surface about 2/3 the width of the part and then shinny material where the ultimate failure occurred when the crack propagated across the part on a single load cycle. The vehicle is admittedly 11 years old and it has 177k miles, but it is still in very good condition with very minimal rust. You can see from the photos that the failed part was not the result of rust and other than the fracture surface, the part is generally not rusted. I still have the failed part in my possession.