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Frequently Asked Questions About Crashworthiness and Vehicle Safety
What is the difference between crashworthiness and vehicle safety?
Simply defined, "crashworthiness" is the ability of a car or other vehicle to protect its occupants during an automobile accident. But crashworthiness is not the same as automotive safety.
What makes a vehicle crashworthy?
Automobile manufacturers and engineers spend years developing automobiles that will withstand car crashes with the safety of their passengers in mind. Vehicle crashworthiness is in a car's design and equipment specifications that ensure passenger safety. For example, design features such as crumple zones, air bags, seatbelts, head rests and padding contribute to a vehicle's crashworthiness.
How does crashworthiness differ from vehicle safety?
Though they are related, vehicle safety and crashworthiness are not the same. In short, crashworthiness is inherent to the car itself, while vehicle safety includes not only crashworthiness, but also features designed for accident avoidance, such as oversized tires or good handling. The accident and injury rates of a car are factored into considerations of auto safety. Thus, it is conceivable that a car with a high crashworthiness rating might actually be less safe overall due to its lack of accident avoidance features or bad statistical history of accidents. By the same token, a vehicle might be statistically safer, but could have a lower crashworthiness index.
How does the law view crashworthiness?
For an effective crashworthiness legal case, a crash needs to have occurred. However, the cause of an accident is not necessarily relevant in a crashworthiness case. Rather, a case that deals with the legal doctrine of crashworthiness will ask two questions - could the occupants of a vehicle involved in an accident have sustained fewer or less severe injuries given the accident's mechanisms? Did the vehicle lack a design feature or accessory that should have been present and would have reduced or eliminated passenger injury?
What is the difference between a crashworthiness case and an accident case?
If you were injured in an auto accident, you might have an accident case, but you don't necessarily have a crashworthiness case. An example of a crashworthiness case is an accident in which airbags fail to deploy or a car has a defective crumple zone, causing injury to its passengers based on a design flaw or defect. A typical accident case will try to assign fault and liability based on the circumstances surrounding the accident. If you were injured in an automobile accident and a defect or design flaw in your automobile caused harm to passengers, you may have a crashworthiness case. Contact a lawyer experienced in product defects litigation for more information.
