Crashworthiness

Crashworthiness is the ability of a vehicle to withstand damages and to prevent occupant injuries during an accident. Typical injuries during serious auto accidents include head injury, paralysis, spinal cord injury, brain injury and death. Crashworthiness can apply to auto accidents, trucking accidents, ATV accidents or motorcycle accidents in Texas or anywhere in the United States. It is a common misconception that the cause of the accident is the only important factor in evaluating an accident. The cause of an accident may become part of a case, that is considered in evaluating all of the contributing causes of an accident, but all factors are evaluated. The lawyers of the Law Offices of Pat Maloney are skilled personal injury lawyers in San Antonio Texas who have experience helping victims who have suffered personal injuries related to crashworthiness issues during auto accidents.

Crashworthiness Versus Vehicle Safety

Crashworthiness is not the same as vehicle safety, although crashworthiness is part of vehicle safety. In addition to the crashworthiness of a vehicle, vehicle safety also includes factors that are related to vehicle accident avoidance, such as the security provided by seat belts or anti-locking brakes. When crashworthiness of a vehicle is being evaluated, it is assumed that an accident has happened and the injuries have occurred from the accident. An evaluation of vehicle safety would include not only how well the vehicle withstood the damages and protected the occupants, but also what vehicle characteristics could have helped to avoid or cause the accident.

Vehicle safety and crashworthiness are often confused and used interchangeably. But, it is not uncommon for a vehicle to be safer, according to statistics, and yet has a defect that reduces its crashworthiness. A vehicle can also have a poor safety record due to factors unrelated to specific vehicle design, but yet have excellent crashworthiness. This is because crashworthiness is based on specific design features or specifications. These design features determine the crashworthiness. Either the vehicle has these features or it does not. The actual safety record, does not impact whether these features are designed into the vehicle.

Crashworthiness is also not the same as vehicle damage. Vehicle damage is normally reported in very technical terms related to surface area of metal damage and amount of metal displacement in the vehicle. Crashworthiness relates to the design features related to the injuries caused by an accident, regardless of how much damage the vehicle sustains.

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Evaluating Crashworthiness

The following are typical questions that would be asked when evaluating crashworthiness. Are there additional design features that could have been designed into the vehicle to reduce or eliminate the injuries caused by the accident? Could these additional design features have helped to protect the occupants, i.e. would the occupants injuries been less severe, for a certain type of injury caused by the accident? Also, could the additional design features help given the severity of the accidents?

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Types of Crashworthiness Issues

Crashworthiness defects are things such as air bags defects, defective seat belts, defects in side impact protection, interior padding defects, roof crush defects, head rest defects, crumple zones defects (occupant area of the car that does not collapse), etc. All of these factors have been known to be important for many years and some cars have included design features to eliminate these crashworthiness defects. But many vehicles produced in the 1990's and beyond do not include proper crashworthiness factors. Standards are being upgraded so that all vehicles have design features to improve crashworthiness, but this is occurring gradually. Some of the features are mandated by the FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards); the federal standards are minimal safety standards and often so outdated they fail to take into account newer information on vehicle/crashworthiness hazards. If an automotive company has been negligent in upgrading or maintaining the crashworthiness of a vehicle, and the poor crashworthiness leads to injury or death, then the victim and/or family members may be entitled to compensation.

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