Automobile Products Liability

When a person makes a claim for personal injury damages which have resulted from the presence of a dangerous or defective automobile, he asserts a Product Liability

Product liability

Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause...

 claim against the automobile's manufacturer and/or the manufacturer of the component part or system.

History

A major foundation for modern awareness of the defects found in automobiles was laid when Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

 published his book Unsafe at Any Speed

Unsafe at Any Speed

Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a book detailing resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety...

about the Chevrolet Corvair

Chevrolet Corvair

-First generation :The 1960 Corvair 500 and 700 series four-door sedans were conceived as economy cars offering few amenities in order to keep the price competitive, with the 500 selling for under $2,000...

 and defects found in other vehicles. A focus of this book was the car manufacturers' intentional choice of saving a few dollars for each car instead of providing safe design and manufacture of their products, as well as avoiding the adding of devices which would protect car occupants from injury.

The Ford Pinto

Ford Pinto

The Ford Pinto is a subcompact car produced by the Ford Motor Company for the model years 1971–1980. The car's name derives from the Pinto horse. Initially offered as a two-door sedan, Ford offered "Runabout" hatchback and wagon models the following year, competing in the U.S. market with the AMC...

 gas tank cases present another instance of saving money at the cost of serious injury to consumers. In Grimshaw v Ford (1981) 119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal. Rptr. 348, the California Court of Appeal

California Court of Appeal

The California Courts of Appeal are the state intermediate appellate courts in the U.S. state of California. The state is geographically divided into six appellate districts...

 upheld a jury verdict of $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $125 million in punitive damages (reduced to $3.5 million by the trial court as a condition of denying a motion for new trial). The jury found that Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

 had known about the unsafe design of the gas tank used in the Pinto, and that this design was an intentional choice by Ford which decided to use a cheaper design which knowingly greatly increased the risk of fire in a rear-impact accident, rather than a more expensive design which would have prevented the death of an occupant.

Unintended acceleration

Unintended acceleration reports resulted in poor publicity for the Audi 5000

Audi 100

The restyled C2 Audi 100 was launched in 1976, with an in-line five-cylinder engine...

 in the United States, and more recently in a massive 2010 Toyota Vehicle Recall and suspension of production and sales of many of the most popular Toyota models.

Stability - rollovers and roof crush

During the 1990s and early 2000s, there was an epidemic of accidents which involved the truck's or car's rolling over as a part of the behavior of the car in the incident. More concerning was the increasing number of "single car accidents" which involved rollovers.

Risk of rollover - instability of vehicle under foreseeable conditions

The National Transportation Safety has recognized the danger of rollovers, and the prevalence of rollovers as a result of the defect created by the design of many SUVs. NHTSA has actively campaigned against this design defect and has adopted and promoted its Rollover Resistance Safety Rating, and has actively promoted the adoption of Electronic Stability Control systems.

Roof crush - major cause of serious injury and deaths

Roof crush injury risks are higher in vehicles with a greater propensity to roll over. Because they are taller and narrower, SUVs, or sports utility vehicles, are three times more likely to roll over in an accident than are other passenger cars. In 1973, the government passed Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216, creating a standard roof strength test to measure the integrity of roof structure in motor vehicles. Roof pillars appear strong to the average consumer, but most of them consist of just sheet metal that is hollow on the inside at the cross sections. Much safer designs exist, at little cost, to reinforce these pillars. Despite federal standards, many vehicle roofs will easily crush a foot or more during a rollover accident. Roof crush injury is most often the result of rollover automobile accidents. Roof crush kills or seriously injures tens of thousands of people every year. Vehicle design is supposed to depend on a structural support system that creates a "survival space" that protects car occupants in a crash from injury due to roof crush. A weak roof makes a vehicle defective, and roof crushes can cause serious and fatal injuries, including disabling brain and spinal injuries.

Keeping occupants in their seats

Car makers have been required to provide seat belts in passenger cars for many years. The failure of seat belts - including the tendency to false latch - can cause or contribute to serious injury and death in what should have been a non-injurious accident.

Protecting occupants from striking parts of the car

Beside seat belts, the most important injury prevention devices in the car are front and side impact airbags.

Containment of occupants in the car

Many vehicle occupants are killed every year because they are ejected from a vehicle which has been involved in an accident, resulting in the ejected occupant being run over by the car or another car.

Tires / tyres

The part of the vehicle which is in contact with the ground are the tires. The need for safe tires is self-evident. However, when a tire is defective in its design or manufacture --- causing tire tread separation or sidewall failure, or when a car manufacturer instructs drivers of a vehicle to use the tires in an unsafe way (such as under-inflating tires in order to mask the dangerous handling characteristics of the vehicle),

External links

• The United States Federal Government's Safer Car site, a project of the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency: your gateway to NHTSA's registry of defect investigations, recall notices, and safety ratings for automobiles sold in the United States.
• Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Publishes results of the Institute's own testing as well as its analysis of insurance company claims records. As a part of its ratings, the Institute acknowledges its own list of "safe vehicles".
• Center for Auto Safety Site with articles from a consumer's point of view.
• Still Unsafe At Any Speed, Auto defect book by products liability expert Brian Chase.
• Public Citizen, An extensive in-depth collection of advocacy for consumers. Much of its automobile defects collection voices the concerns and insights of its former President, Joan Claybrook, who was the head of NHTSA in the Carter administration.