Were you in a car accident but your car’s airbags didn’t deploy? You may have a case against the manufacturer.
Every year, defective products cause numerous injuries in the United States. If you’ve been hurt due to a defective product, you may have a product liability case. Product liability law takes into account who should be held responsible for defective products, such as car airbags. Product liability law can help a person who’s been injured in an accident be awarded the damages they deserve.
There are many different reasons why an air bag may or may not deploy during an accident. It’s important to speak with an attorney to determine the reasons why your air bag didn’t deploy when you expected it to. Your lawyer will work with an engineer to begin investigating your specific car’s airbags and air bag functionality. They will find out when the airbags in your car are supposed to deploy, which will help them determine if you have a product liability case against the car manufacturer. If they find that the airbags should have deployed but did not, you may have a case.
Airbags aren’t created to deploy each and every time you get into any sort of car accident. Generally, they’re meant to deploy when the car’s interior is impacted, which only happens in some accidents and under certain circumstances. The point of the airbag is to keep you save from interior impact. Your attorney will be able to determine if your car accident should have resulted in the airbags deploying. It’s important that you keep your car and don’t make any changes to it until your attorney has had a chance to investigate.
If the car manufacturer sold a car that has defective devices, such as airbags, the seller is liable for damages. Any and all sellers related to the car’s distribution can be held accountable. It is the law that a product must meet certain standards that the customer expects, such as having airbags deploy during a serious car accident. If a product is defective, it isn’t able to reasonably meet these expectations.
There are three basic ways that a product can be considered defective: design, manufacturing and marketing. In order to prove that a product is defective, it must meet one of those thresholds. Design defects refer to a product that has an unsafe aspect of the design that was present from the very beginning of the product design, prior to manufacturing. Manufacturing defects refer to problems that arise while the product is being made or put together. Marketing defects refer to misleading ways a product is marketed, such as not having proper safety warnings or having labels that are misleading.
In addition to proving that the airbags didn’t deploy when they should have, your attorney will have to show that you have injuries that would not have occurred had the airbags deployed as they were supposed to. For example, if you injured yourself by hitting a part of the car’s interior that should have been protected by the airbag, such as the windshield, it’s possible that you have a claim. Additionally, your attorney will need to show that the force of the accident should have made the airbags deploy. If you were injured on the car’s interior but the accident didn’t warrant the airbags deploying, it will be hard to hold the manufacturer liable.
Note that it’s possible you won’t have a case if you made changes to your car that could have potentially affected the airbag functionality. If you made alterations to your car that the manufacturer couldn’t control, and those alterations affected the airbags, it will be difficult to prove that the fault lies with the manufacturer.
Personal injury law and product liability claims are detailed and complex. It’s important to contact an attorney right away so they can inform you of what to do from the very beginning. If you feel you’ve been injured due to faulty airbags, get in touch with a lawyer today.