Flaws In Your Car You Should Know About

By Bryan Snyder  
 
Even the safest cars can become hazardous if they suffer from design and manufacturing flaws. Modern automobiles have numerous advantages over their predecessors, such as specially designed crumple zones; driver, passenger and side curtain airbags that deploy within a fraction of a second should on-board sensors detect an accident; and seat-belt restraints that maintain a consistent area of pressure throughout the body of a passenger in order to disburse the affect of a collision over wider body surface area.

These marvels of safety innovation have saved countless lives, and would undoubtedly save countless more. But what happens when the very innovations designed to save lives take them, or fail to activate at the appropriate time? Drivers take for granted these safety features, but if defective products work their way into a car design it is the innocent that sometimes pay for these mistakes with their lives.

Though no one should drive recklessly because they think that their auto safety features will save them, the sense of security they bring to the driving experience is often a factor in the purchase of a vehicle. To that end, auto manufacturers have a duty and a responsibility to not include defective devices in the design or manufacture of their cars.

Some of the most common points of failure and defective devices in automobiles include:

• Airbags: Even though airbags have made astounding leaps and bounds in performance and safety over the last few generations of automobiles, they are technologically complex pieces of equipment with numerous failure points. A faulty crash sensor, defective deploying device or a failure to properly recalibrate the airbag after a previous accident could seriously imperil the lives of the drivers and passengers that depend on these devices to save their lives in case of a car accident.
• Seat belts: Like airbags, seatbelts are a vital safety feature included in every car sold in the United States. In fact, 49 states mandate their use, as they can prevent a passenger being thrown from a vehicle during a high speed collision or rollover so common to the SUVs and other cars that frequent American roads. Unfortunately, if a car manufacturer uses defective seat belt latches that fail to secure the strap across a person, or a belt that cannot support the weight of a person when accelerated to accident speeds, the company that built the car and designed the seat belt can sometimes be held liable for their oversight in a court of law.
• Crumple zones: Crumple zones are features in cars that all the car to "crunch up" when they impact another car or other solid object. Though it seems counter-intuitive, by allowing the body of a car to absorb the shock of an impact it prevents that energy from being diverted to the passengers, and because the high grade materials used in modern cars is stronger than the human body, this feature can save lives. Unfortunately, if a car manufacturer builds a car based on a defective design, these crumple zones can become killer zones. Defective designed crumple zones can have jagged metal struts that protrude into passenger compartments, or have metal that crunches up a bit too well, crushing the innocent people trapped inside.

Cars are a vital part of American life, and people trust them to be as safe as possible during an accident. However, a defectively designed or manufactured safety feature can quickly turn a routine accident into a scene of untold agony and misery.

When selecting an automobile, always check to see if your car is up to standard in all its safety devices. You owe it to yourself, your family, and the other drivers on the road. A little foresight before will save you enormous agony later.

Bryan Snyder is a San Diego car accident lawyer 0 that is ready and willing to stand by you through the litigation process, to work with you to find a solution to your situation and help you to get your life back on track. As a defective product attorney, Bryan Snyder has been represented victims of car crashes involving cars with defective safety designs.