Crash Worthiness

Crash Worthiness Overview

What does it mean to describe a vehicle as crashworthy?
Crashworthiness refers to the ability of a vehicle to protect its occupants during a collision, rollover, or other impact. Aspects of the vehicle contributing to its crashworthiness include the structural design, passenger restraints such as seat belts and air bags, locks, suspension, tires, and many other structural elements.

Car manufacturers around the world subject new vehicles in development to extensive testing to determine their safety for passengers in the vehicles. In the United States consumers have frequently seen televised enactments of crash-test dummies placed in vehicles that are then placed in crash simulations, such as a rear-end collision, or sideways collision, or a vehicle rollover. In each of these test scenarios, instruments are attached which record the type of impact and its force. This testing allows automotive engineers to evaluate the nature of impacts, and the severity of potential injuries.

For years, good trial lawyers, including lawyers at Casey Gerry, have brought actions against manufacturers of vehicles when seatbelts did not hold, or when poor and unsafe designs within the vehicle made collision injuries far worse than they should have been. This type of litigation is often referred to as crashworthiness litigation. Sometimes in a collision the seatbelt will break causing a person’s body to catapult in a way that results in a serious injury. Had the seatbelt not broken, the injury would have been relatively minor. Sometimes there will be an implosion in the vehicle that causes part of the vehicle to intrude on the passenger space, causing massive injuries to passengers or driver. Statistical research may show that in better designed vehicles such intrusion injuries simply do not occur.