Product Liability Law Blog

We have previously written about how Auto Safety lawsuits helped to improve the rollover resistance of Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) design – with manufacturers adopting some of the design and testing techniques advocated in lawsuits for decades, to produce safer, more rollover resistant SUVs. In other areas as well, auto safety suits and the publicity and awareness they generate have led to important auto safety improvements. Another example: preventing buckles from releasing themselves in the course of an accident.

Until relatively recently, many vehicles used seat belt buckles with buttons on their sides, rather than their ends. These were exposed to unintended release in accidents, including side impacts where the buckles would strike a center console or the occupant’s hip, inertially releasing the buckle (where inertia effectively “pushes” the button, undoing the seat belt). Most vehicles have now moved to end release designs. This is good, but not enough. End release buckles can also be released inertially unless they use a very inexpensive small part – which costs just pennies – that prevents such release. Fortunately, these release-resistant buckles are found in many vehicles – the rest need to follow suit. Most car makers also require that the buckle release button be recessed and small enough that it isn’t exposed to accidental release from an elbow or hand flailing in an accident. They use a very low-tech test for this: It should be impossible to push the button with a steel ball 30 mm or larger. Unfortunately, a few seatbelt systems fail to meet this simple, common sense test.

As with SUV rollover, we’ve made great progress. Now we need car makers to fix the few “bad apples” still on the road. Where folks are conscientious enough to wear their seatbelts, the manufacturer owes it to them to provide a belt that will stay on in the accident.

Posted by Gilbert, Ollanik, & Komyatte, P.C. | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Seat Belts

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Over the years, we have been fortunate enough to see our efforts pay off in terms of auto safety. We think it is clear that certain safety improvements have resulted directly from the information brought to light by auto safety lawsuits which are often covered by the media, from imposing the costs of particularly dangerous designs on the manufacturer that chooses to use them, and on the safety research that has been motivated by, and often paid for by, representatives of injured consumers. One example: the great improvement in Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) rollover resistance.

In the 1970’s Utility Vehicles became popular for the first time, but several of the most popular were astonishingly prone to rollover – some rolling over while cornering at speeds as low as 22 mph. Rollover dangers were identified by both University and consumer protection researchers, and the danger was exposed by lawyers for consumers injured by these unnecessarily tipsy vehicles. By the mid 1980’s, the worst of these were replaced by similar models with greatly improved rollover resistance. Still, some manufacturers continued to market vehicles that looked more stable, but still had dangerous rollover instability. These vehicles were prone to rollover in the event the driver needed to make an emergency steer, such as to avoid a vehicle suddenly changing lanes, an animal, an object in the roadway, or even a child. Lawsuits in the 1980’s and 1990’s helped not only expose these risks, especially in Ford Bronco IIs and Explorers (especially pre-2002), Toyota 4Runners (especially pre-1996), Mitsubishi Monteros, and Isuzu SUVs, but also helped to identify the solutions, including making the vehicles slightly lower and slightly wider. Lawsuits also helped in the development of test methods for discriminating among more and less stable vehicles. This publicity led to government research, and a government star rating system for rollover stability. As a result, in recent years many models of SUVs have been designed (or re-designed) with stability in mind, providing much greater rollover resistance even in accident avoidance situations where strong steering is required.

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Posted In: Sport Utility Vehicle Rollovers

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has finished its count of 2007 crash fatalities in the United States, and the news is good. Traffic deaths are down nearly 4%. Injuries also declined, by over 3%. We still have a long way to go. Over 41,000 people died on the nation’s highways –3,000 more than a capacity crowd at Boston’s Fenway Park. Nearly 2.5 million were injured, more than the total attendance of all the games at Denver’s Coor’s Field all season.

The news was particularly bright for passenger cars, which saw a fatality decline of 7.8% and injury decline of 6.5%. The news was less good for light trucks (pickups and SUVs), which lagged with a 2.7% fatality decline and 1.9% injury decline. The news was atrocious for motorcycles which bucked the trend, with a 6.6% increase in fatalities, breaking the 5,000 deaths mark, and a whopping 17% increase in injuries, 15,000 more than the year before, shooting above the 100,000 mark. We are troubled and puzzled by the increased risk to motorcyclists, and will watch with interest for any explanations.

Many factors contributed to the overall safety increase. One likely contributor is the greater availability of cars with Electronic Stability Control – the safety system that helps motorists avoid loss of control by selectively braking or controlling power to individual wheels when a skid is detected. This system is predicted to dramatically decrease the number of accidents as it becomes included in more and more cars. We would not buy a new car without Electronic Stability Control, which is now widely available on a variety of vehicles in every price range. We strongly disapprove of manufacturers that offer ESC only as an extra-cost option. When that happens, dealers tend to not order the vehicles. When ESC is included as standard equipment, as it is in most Honda vehicles for instance, costs can be kept low for the consumer, and the accident danger to all of us is reduced. Other product improvements including elimination of lap-only belts in newer cars, greater availability of side curtain airbags, and more rollover resistant SUV, also likely contributed to the progress in crash injury prevention.

Driver factors also certainly played a role, including strong enforcement of drunk driving laws and graduated drivers licenses that have dramatically improved teen driver accident, death, and injury rates.

One other factor that has certainly contributed to lower death and injury rates: product improvements and safety demand from consumers resulting from product liability lawsuits and the awareness of dangers that they create.

We should applaud our progress as a nation in reducing the toll of the highway crash epidemic, but given the magnitude of the harm – over 41,000 families losing loved ones, and 2.5 million Americans suffering injuries each year – we need to continue to push for greater safety both vehicle design and driver behavior.

Posted by Gilbert, Ollanik, & Komyatte, P.C. | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Automotive Product Liability

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