Blog Topic

Defective Seat Belts
Posted by: Craig A. Knapp
July 23, 2011

It's the first thing you're told to do when getting in the car, "Put on your seat belt." Seat belts are said to be a high determinant in whether or not someone lives or dies in an accident, making it the most important safety component in your vehicle. But what happens when the thing you rely on most is unreliable? Defective seat belts claim an estimated 6,000 lives each year.

What is a defective seat belt?

A defective seat belt is a seat belt that is not working properly or how it was designed to work.

Examples of possible defective seat belts include:

Faulty latch: Your seat belt seems like it's in, you heard it click when you buckled it, but the latch does not stay connected.

Inertial unlatching: Upon impact or collision, your seat belt becomes unlatched due to poor pressure resistance.

Excessive slack in the belt: Instead of your belt locking when you hit the breaks, the belt moves freely, causing the seat belt to be useless in a collision or sudden stop.

When we at Knapp & Roberts typically write a blog, our goal is to provide useful information to avoid accidents. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to defective seat belts, there isn't much that can be done to prevent these things from happening. The best advice we can provide is to do your research when buying your car. Try to buy a credible name brand vehicle with a good safety rating by NHTSA.

Regardless of the brand of your vehicle, type of collision, the cause of an accident, or who is at fault, a seat belt is something that should be reliable. If you or someone you love has been injured in an automobile accident due to a defective seat belt, do not hesitate to give Knapp & Roberts' attorneys a call. Your seat belt is the most important safety item in your car and it should be working properly. Help prevent future defective seat belt accidents from happening to others who own your vehicle.

Permalink

Although Seat Belts Are Great, They Can Fail. So If You Think that a Seat Belt Has Caused an Injury or Made it Worse, Seek Legal Advice.
Posted by: David Abney
August 13, 2010

Do not think that we are telling you not to use seat belts because some seat belts are poorly built or badly designed and fail to protect the drivers and passengers using them. Statistically, you are overwhelmingly safer using seat belts. In a crash, they almost always keep you from being ejected from the vehicle and keep you from violently striking a windshield, dashboard, steering wheel, window, or other interior surface.

But as the passenger-liner Titanic and the space-shuttle Challenger remind us, nothing that people make is perfectly safe. Seat belts can and do cause injury and death. For instance, some seat belts suffer from "film spool," which lets the shoulder part of a three-point seat belt slacken. That can let the person wearing the seat belt snap forward viciously in an accident, causing permanent paralysis or even death. For example, a recent case involved a five-year-old girl using a three-point seat belt in a Ford Taurus. The seat belt had "film spool," and its slackness in a collision caused her to upper body to lurch violently forward. That caused a spinal-cord injury with permanent loss of all feeling in her body below her rib cage. Stark ex rel. Jacobson v. Ford Motor Co., 693 S.E.2d 253 (N.C. App. 2010).

A related problem is failure to lock. For instance, the driver of a Ford Escort was properly wearing his three-point seat belt when another vehicle crashed head-on into his car. The lap-belt part of the seat belt locked properly, and the driver had no injuries to the lower part of his body. But the retractor on the shoulder restraint was defectively designed, and failed to lock, causing the driver to suffer a severe head injury. Force v. Ford Motor Co., 879 So.2d 103 (Fla. App. 2004).

Another defect in some seat-belt designs is a tendency to come unlatched in an accident--just when you most need the seat belt to stay closed. For instance, an eighteen-year-old girl was killed when the buckle of her GM Tahoe's seat belt came unlatched because of an "inertial release." That happens when the forces of a collision exert pressure on the defective seat belt just as if someone has pressed the seat belt's release button. When the Tahoe's seat belt suffered inertial release, the seat belt flew open, and the girl was thrown from the vehicle. Frazier v. Honeywell International, Inc., 518 F. Supp. 2d 831 (E.D. Tex. 2007).

In addition, some seat belts that are designed well are made badly. For instance, a man driving a Ford Ranger pickup truck braked hard when traffic in front of him stopped suddenly. Although the man was wearing his seat belt, it came unbuckled, letting his body fly forward. His head hit the windshield and his right shoulder struck the car's interior. An expert examination of the seat belt revealed that the seat belt's latch spring was badly manufactured and had fatigue cracks that had let the seat belt pop open during the crash. Znaor v. Ford Motor Co., 159 P.3d 1252 (Or. App. 2007).

Once again, use your seat belts. They almost always protect you very well in a collision. But if you or your loved ones have been hurt in a crash, and you believe that a seat belt has failed, don't think that you are just imagining things. Seat belts can be badly built or defectively designed. So if you have been involved in a serious accident and suspect a seat-belt problem, consult the lawyers at Knapp & Roberts--lawyers who understand that seat belts can fail to do their job properly.

Permalink