When you get into a car accident, you trust that your car’s safety features will protect you from harm. After all these features are designed to protect drivers and passengers from the extreme forces of the crash. While they cannot prevent all injuries, they do reduce the severity of the injuries suffered. But what happens when your airbags don’t deploy during a car accident?
In some situations, this could be the result of a manufacturing defect. When a manufacturer’s negligence or defective design results in your injury, you may be able to file a claim or lawsuit seeking damages. However, these types of cases are complex and difficult to navigate on your own. As such, it is important to speak to an experienced Arkansas defective airbag injury lawyer immediately to explore your legal options. A car accident attorney could help you seek compensation.
Airbags have only been around since the 1970s when Ford introduced them in an experimental fleet of cars. It wasn’t until 1998 that airbags became a requirement in all new vehicles. Airbags are now in all of our cars, but do you know how they work?
There are three main parts to an airbag: the bag, the sensor, and the inflation system.
When nitrogen is produced by the inflation system and the bag inflates, it bursts out of the steering wheel or dashboard. The reaction happens faster than you can blink your eye, keeping you from colliding with the steering wheel, dashboard, and windshield. About a second after the airbags inflate, they are already deflating because of holes in the airbag, so they can get out of your way.
Unfortunately, airbags don’t always work as they’re supposed to. For example, Takata airbags have been under scrutiny, and millions have been recalled for defects that have killed several people instead of saving them. But why would your airbags fail to deploy?
Airbags are supposed to deploy in only moderate or severe crashes. They are not designed to deploy in all accidents for valid safety reasons. Whether or not they deploy depends on many factors.
Those factors include:
Because there are so many factors that affect whether or not your airbag should deploy, it is important to speak to an experienced Arkansas attorney. Your attorney would need to examine the details of your crash and your car’s system to determine why your airbags failed to deploy. If your airbags should have deployed but failed to, your attorney will need to investigate more closely to determine the true cause of failure.
Some of the most common reasons for failure include:
Airbags are engineered to respond to a narrow set of crash conditions, which is one reason so many drivers are confused when their airbags do not deploy after a serious wreck. Sensors are calibrated to read impact speed and the rate of sudden deceleration, not simply the fact that a collision occurred. A vehicle that strikes an object and stops abruptly sends a different signal to the sensor than one that slows gradually, even if the vehicles end up with similar damage.
The direction and angle of impact matter just as much as speed. Front airbags are generally built to respond to impacts within a fairly narrow zone at the front of the vehicle, which is why front versus side impacts trigger different systems entirely. A side-impact crash relies on side-curtain or seat-mounted sensors rather than the sensors positioned at the front of the frame. Glancing impacts, where a vehicle is struck at an angle or sideswiped rather than hit head-on, often fail to generate enough direct force for the sensors to register a deployment-level event, even when the crash causes real injury. If your crash met these conditions and your airbag still failed to fire, an Arkansas defective airbag attorney could help determine whether the system itself was to blame.
Every modern vehicle has a Supplemental Restraint System, commonly shown on the dashboard as “SRS” or an illuminated airbag icon. When this light stays on after you start your car, it usually means the onboard computer has detected a fault somewhere in the airbag system, whether that is a wiring issue, a low-voltage clock spring, or a sensor that is no longer communicating correctly. A driver who ignored, or was never warned about, an active SRS light before a crash may have unknowingly been driving a vehicle that could not deploy its airbags when needed. If an SRS light was on before your wreck, a defective airbag injury attorney in Arkansas could use that history to build your claim. Our attorneys often request a vehicle’s onboard diagnostic history and maintenance records to determine whether an SRS warning was present before the wreck and whether the manufacturer or a repair shop should have addressed it.
When an airbag fails to deploy or deploys incorrectly, it can cause serious and devastating injuries. There are numerous airbag malfunctions that can result in injury and harm to drivers and passengers. Those include:
Airbag sensors, sometimes called crash sensors or accelerometers, are the components responsible for telling the inflation system when to fire. A sensor that is poorly designed, improperly installed, or damaged during a prior repair can fail to register a severe collision at all. In other cases, corroded wiring or a loose connector between the sensor and the control module can interrupt the signal before it ever reaches the airbag. Because these defects are often hidden inside the vehicle’s frame or dashboard, they are rarely obvious just from looking at the car after a wreck. Rainwater, Holt & Sexton works with engineers and accident reconstruction professionals to inspect these components and determine whether a sensor defect, rather than the nature of the crash itself, is why your airbag failed to deploy. This is precisely the kind of investigation a defective airbag injury lawyer in Arkansas is equipped to handle.
Airbag malfunction is serious and can result in fatal injuries. When an airbag fails to deploy or deploys at the wrong time or in the wrong way, it can cause even worse injuries to passengers and drivers during an accident. In some extreme cases, airbags can even explode, sending shrapnel around the vehicle and causing fatal injuries.
Common injuries caused by airbags include:
By far, the most common injuries suffered when an airbag malfunctions or fails to deploy are head and facial injuries. That is because the airbag is meant to help protect the head and face from suffering an injury during a crash. Without the airbag there to offer cushion and support, the head and face can slam violently into the steering wheel or the side window. This can result in significant facial injuries, as well as head trauma that could be life-threatening.
If you believe that your airbag did not deploy properly during an accident, you may have cause to file a claim against the manufacturer of the airbag. This is just one of the many steps you may need to take after a car accident. Bringing a case against a manufacturer for a product defect falls under product liability law. This is a complex area of law and requires the services of an experienced attorney.
A manufacturer is held under strict liability. This means that if a product is defective, they are held liable for any damages due to that defect. Even if they are unaware of the defect or could not have prevented the defect, they are still responsible.
When bringing a case against a manufacturer for defective airbags, you and your attorney will need to clearly establish four elements.
Those elements are:
It is important to know that under strict liability, you and your attorney do not need to prove negligence.
In some cases, the airbag failed to deploy because it was damaged or tampered with during a repair. For example, a mechanic may have damaged a replacement airbag when installing it. When this occurs, your attorney may need to prove negligence, since the product was not defective.
To do this, your attorney must show that the defendant owed you a duty of care and failed in that duty. That breach of duty must have also directly caused your injury and damages.
There may be times when you may have a claim against someone under the theory of breach of warranty. This is not common, but it does happen. Under a breach of warranty claim, the manufacturer must either breach an express warranty or an implied warranty. These cases are complicated and require specific knowledge of warranty claims and laws pertaining to these breaches.
As you can see, there can be multiple ways to assert a claim after a serious airbag injury. Your Arkansas attorney will need to review your defective airbag case closely to determine the best overall course of legal action to take.
To prove these elements, you must gather evidence for your case. This evidence is critical to winning your product liability claim and holding a negligent manufacturer accountable. After a car accident, valuable evidence is often tampered with, repaired, or even destroyed. For this reason, it is important to act quickly and begin gathering evidence immediately after your accident.
Do you know what to do after a car accident? You can help your case by doing the following:
Your car accident attorney in Arkansas will take this defective airbag investigation and collection of evidence even further. They may:
Millions of vehicles on Arkansas roads have been affected by airbag recalls over the years, including the widespread Takata inflator recalls. To check your own vehicle, locate your seventeen-digit Vehicle Identification Number, which is typically found on the lower corner of the windshield on the driver’s side, on the driver’s door jamb, or on your registration and insurance cards. From there, visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s recall lookup page at NHTSA.gov/recalls and enter your VIN to see any open safety recalls tied to your specific vehicle. If a recall is open, the repair should be completed at your dealership free of charge. Even if nothing appears today, we encourage clients to sign up for recall alerts, since new airbag recalls continue to be issued.
If you were in a moderate or severe crash and your airbags never inflated, treat the vehicle as evidence. Avoid making repairs before an attorney or an accident reconstruction professional has had the chance to examine the airbag module, sensors, and wiring, since these components can reveal whether a defect, rather than the nature of the collision, caused the failure. Seek medical attention promptly, even if your injuries seem minor at first, and keep copies of your treatment records. Photograph the vehicle’s interior and exterior damage from multiple angles before it is moved or towed, and check your dashboard for any SRS or airbag warning light that may have been active before or after the crash. Once you have taken these steps, contact a defective airbag injury attorney at Rainwater, Holt & Sexton in Arkansas so we can begin preserving evidence and investigating why your airbags did not perform as they should have.
Product liability cases are difficult and require a legal professional with specific knowledge and experience in this area of law. While your attorney explores a lawsuit against the manufacturer, you may also find you can collect damages from the “at fault” driver as well. Your attorney will need to examine all angles of your accident to build the best case for maximum compensation.
Speaking to an experienced Arkansas defective airbag injury attorney at Rainwater, Holt & Sexton is the first step towards putting your life back together again. We can help you hold irresponsible manufacturers accountable for the harm they’ve caused.
Being involved in an auto accident is terrifying and can cause significant financial burdens to you and your family. Arkansas law allows accident victims to collect specific types of compensation after an accident and contacting an experienced attorney can help.
With offices throughout Arkansas — Little Rock, Little Rock – Corporate Hill, Springdale, Conway, Hot Springs, Bryant, Jacksonville, and Jonesboro — our Arkansas defective airbag injury lawyers are easily accessible when you need help.
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