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When it comes to automobile safety, there's really no such thing as too much. Every year, around 30,000 Americans die in automobile accidents, many of whose lives could easily have been saved had they been properly using their vehicle's safety features. These accidents cost Americans over $ 160 billion in expenses every year, according to a recent study, and a lot of this tally could be prevented through simply wearing seat belts.
However, sometimes safety features fail. It's an unfortunate reality: there is no such thing as perfect engineering. Whether it's a design flaw or a manufacturing defect, failures in the production of automobile safety features can cause you injury and lost wages. If you have been injured due to faulty safety equipment, you should consider hiring a personal injury lawyer to represent you in a lawsuit against the manufacturer. Often, in the case of design failures, you can file a class action suit along with other people who were injured due to the same defect.
When Safety Features Go Wrong
Because there's a degree of human error present in virtually everything made by humans, even the most familiar piece of safety equipment can fail.
Seat Belts
The most common failure involving seat belts is due to either a failure to latch correctly or a sudden unlatching during impact. Obviously, this seriously reduces the effectiveness of seat belts. One particularly frequent problem is inertial unlatching, in which the force of impact causes the release mechanism to be hit and the seat belt disengaged. Other common problems involve an excessive slack in the seat belt, or a spooling problem in the mechanism.
Airbags
Between the years of 1960 and 2002, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 12,000 people's lives were saved by airbags. However, between 1990 and 2001, 215 people died as a result of airbags inflating in low-speed crashes. The problem with airbags is that they deploy quickly and powerfully, and can severely injure a driver or passenger. Even if properly calibrated, airbags can be dangerous because of the amount of force with which they inflate.
Anti-Lock Brakes
Anti-lock brakes use a mechanism to rapidly squeeze and release the breaks in your car to avoid locking. However, vehicles are occasionally recalled due to the discovery of faulty wiring or rapid wear. If they fail, you could unknowingly lock the wheels of your car and skid into an accident.
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Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Automobile-Safety-Defects&id=2686496
