Auto Defect Attorneys

Crashworthiness is a measure of a vehicle’s capacity to protect occupants from injuries in every type of impact, a concept derived from the aviation field. An automobile manufacturer has a legal duty to design and manufacture vehicles that provide for the safety of the occupants in foreseeable vehicular accidents.

• Rollover—roof crush
• Rollover—stability
• Seat defects
• Seat belt defects
• Air bag defects (front, side, curtains)
• Unintended acceleration
• Park to reverse
• Tire defects
• Fuel system defects

Rollovers are survivable if vehicles provide basic occupant protection. Unlike front or side impact crashes — where the vehicle has to absorb a large amount of energy in a short amount of time — in a rollover, energy is typically dissipated over a longer time and distance. Therefore, the forces on the occupants are often lower than in a frontal or side impact, making a rollover survivable with adequate occupant protection.

Vehicle defects that contribute to occupant injury in rollovers include:

• lack of adequate roof and pillar strength
• seat belts that do not safely hold occupants in their seats
• seat belts that unlatch
• door locks and latches that fail allowing ejection
• lack of glazing in the side or rear window that can help keep occupants inside vehicles
• lack of side curtain airbags, which can prevent ejection

Some Seatbelt Defects Include:

1. Lap Only Seat Belt: The most common type of auto accident is a frontal collision. In such collisions, occupants using a lap-only belt can “jackknife” over the lap belt. Jackknifing may result in fatal or severe abdominal injuries and/or spinal cord injuries or cause the victim’s head to strike the front seat or center console resulting in neurological injury.
   A seat belt system that restrains the upper torso as well as the lower torso, e.g., 3-point belts, provides safer occupant protection than lap-only systems. Lap only belt cases often involve children and women since their smaller stature makes them more susceptible to harm from seat belts that are designed for the specifications of a 50th percentile male anthropomorphic dummy. These smaller individuals are often seated in the rear center seat using a lap-only belt when they are injured.
2. Improper Anchor Location: The location in which seatbelts are anchored to the vehicle may not provide effective restraint in some accidents, including rollovers, because it permits excessive excursion of an occupant in a collision. If improper anchor points create a lack of balance between the upper and lower torso or shoulder belt and lap belt, then even though an occupant of a vehicle is wearing both the lap and shoulder belts, the occupant may suffer serious injuries depending upon where the imbalance lies.
3. “Submarining” Under The Seat Belt: “Submarining” occurs when a lap belt rides over the pelvis and penetrates the abdomen. When this occurs, the forces generated in a collision are shifted from the strength of the pelvis into the weaker abdomen of the occupant. Such occurrences may arise with a lap-only belt or an improperly designed lap/shoulder belt restraint system.
4. Inertial Unlatching: When seatbelt buckles are not equipped with anti-inertial unlatching features, the forces of an accident may cause the seatbelt to become unlatched thereby causing an occupant to become unrestrained.

1. Failure Of An Airbag To Deploy: In a non-deployment airbag case, the airbag fails to deploy in a crash mode in which it was designed to go off. In a side or low impact accident, the frontal airbag is not designed to deploy. However, in a higher speed accident with a frontal component, a failure to deploy should be investigated.
2. Airbags Deploy Too Late In The Accident: Airbags deploy in a fraction of a second. The design intent of the airbag is to have the airbag fully deployed before the occupant starts to interact with the airbag. To achieve maximum protection for the occupant, the airbag must inflate within milliseconds or before the force of the initial collision causes the occupant to move a certain distance toward the interior of the vehicle. If the airbag malfunctions and deploys too late in the accident sequence, the occupant will have moved into the airbag deployment zone and will be hit by an intruding airbag. This is especially dangerous given that an airbag can deploy at 200 mph.
3. Aggressive Airbags: In an accident where the airbag deploys but the belted occupant is severely injured, a number of airbag defects may be present. If the airbag comes out with such great force, and the volume is so large that it contacts the occupant while it is still deploying and before the airbag fully deployed, the airbag may be too aggressive and the airbag volume too large. Also, an airbag may be too aggressive if it deploys in a low-speed impact when it should not have deployed.