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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
Topic: Seat Belts and Air Bags

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.


The Knapp & Roberts law firm represents serious injury and wrongful death clients throughout Arizona, including the communities of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Glendale, Peoria, Surprise, Queen Creek, Apache Junction, Goodyear, Tucson, Flagstaff, and Yuma in the Valley of the Sun - Maricopa County, Pinal County, Coconino County, Yuma County, and Gila County.