Over Aggressive Air Bags Can Kill

Added: (Sat Jan 23 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Air bags save lives. Air bags also have the potential to kill the occupants of a vehicle involved in an accident.

While it’s a documented fact that air bags do save lives, defective air bags, air bag failures and other glitches have caused extremely severe and at times, fatal injuries. In most instances, the fatalities have occurred to shorter drivers who, because of their lack of height, sit up closer to the steering wheel. “The problem here is that even with low speed impacts, when the air bags deploy, the driver who sits closer to the wheel may suffer very severe or fatal injuries when they otherwise would have only had minimal injuries,” explained Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury attorney.

This problem is far more prevalent than many people think. Witness the statistics produced by the NTSA’s accident database that reveal air bag defects took the lives of close to 1,400 people who were involved in front-impact collisions and the air bags didn’t deploy. These figures did not take into account side-impact crashes, impacts to the left or right front fenders, or ejections and rollovers.

If those figures had been used in the final calculations, the death count would have risen to approximately 4,000. “The disturbing thing is that defective air bag deaths have crept up every year. Even with the advent of more safety features, this is to be considered a very alarming jump in the area of auto products liability,” Ozcomert commented.

It’s not just short adults who lose their lives in an impact due to air bags not deploying. On the other side of the coin are injuries and fatalities that involve children under the age of 12. The passenger side air bags explode outward at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. Being struck by a fast moving object that impacts with that kind of force has often been lethal for younger children who are not belted in or not properly belted to the seat.

Unfortunately, many types of air bags that inflate from the front instrument panel do so horizontally, aiming directly at a child’s head. “The other disturbing factor here is that many of the giant automakers don’t properly crash test air bag systems using dummies that stand in for infants, short statured individuals, small children and very large adults. A lack of testing like this has the potential to lead to product liability issues that may land in court,” said Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury attorney.

Anyone with questions about being in a car collision and sustaining injuries due to what appears to be a defective air bag system needs to talk to a skilled attorney and find out what their rights are. The attorney will also tell them if they have a good case and how it may be pursued.