Defective Airbags

Defective Airbags: Failure to Deploy

Defective airbags sometimes deploy at the wrong time and can even fail to deploy altogether. Serious injuries and even death can occur from airbags failing to open. Defective airbags are in cars everywhere, and drivers often don?t discover this until it is too late.
When Should Airbags Deploy:

Airbags are designed to deploy when a vehicle in forward motion decelerates quickly. Most airbag systems are created to sense vehicle deceleration corresponding to a frontal collision at speeds in excess of 20 to 25 mph.
Failure to Deploy

When airbags fail to deploy under these conditions, passengers don?t have the benefit of protection they expect from the airbag and can incur injuries that should have been prevented.
Airbags and Personal Injury

With the rapid adoption of airbags, there has been a corresponding reduction in the severity of some crash-related injuries, and many lives have been saved by airbags which function properly. Unfortunately, there has been an alarming increase in the number of injuries and fatalities reported as the result of airbags failing to deploy.
Air Bags Causing Injury

When properly designed, air bags can be useful safety devices. Unfortunately, many air bag systems were poorly designed, resulting in numerous known air bag defects which in turn have resulted in thousands of serious air bag injuries. Defectively designed air bags are known to cause brain hemorrhages, burst hearts, severed brain stems, spinal injury, broken necks, blindings, TMJ syndrome, facial bone fractures, upper extremity injuries and disfigurement. These injuries have killed and paralyzed unsuspecting adults and children in collisions in which no one would have been injured in if the air bag didn't deploy.
Air Bag Defects

Automobile manufacturers have produced air bag systems which are plagued by a wide range of dangerous defects. These defects have been identified by lawyers engaged in representing injured consumers and their survivors through diligent research and litigation. These defects include;

Aggressively overpowered air bags: Many auto manufacturers rushed to install air bags to obtain a marketing advantage over their competitors. For this reason a decade of air bags were put on the road with inadequate testing. The majority of the resulting air bag systems utilized dangerously over powerful air bag inflators, which cause serious injury and death when they strike occupants while deploying. Some airbags still meet Federal standards after being depowered by 70%.

Air Bags Without Tethers: Tethers are straps sewn inside the air bag which physically prevent the air bag from extending all the way to the occupant's face and eyes. These cost $1 or $2 a piece. Untethered air bags are quite capable of causing serious injury, since they are able to extend further toward the occupant. Eye injuries, including blinding injuries are the often the result of air bags slapping the face due to lack of tethers.

Inadequate Sensor Numbers and Locations: Attempts to save money by using fewer sensors have led to defects which cause the remaining sensors to be overly sensitive or to be unable to timely detect a collision or to fail to detect a collision. Failure to test the numbers, calibration and location of sensors in foreseeable crash scenarios also results in dangerously defective sensors systems.

Inferior Algorithms: Newer air bag systems use electronic sensors which rely on their software to analyze deceleration data to determine if and when to deploy the air bag. These software sub-routines are referred to as algorithms. Inadequate algorithms can cause air bags to fire too late, fail to fire or deploy or to even fire for no reason at all.

Venting and Folding Defect: Injuries can be caused by mistakes in the number, size and location of gas vents and in the pattern used to fold the air bag. These can cause injuries from serious burns to brain damage.

Failure to Incorporate Technology: Many air bag systems are deficient because they fail to incorporate available technology. Examples are systems which fail to use systems which can identify the severity of the crash and then deploy the air bag with different power levels depending upon the energy produced in the crash. Other examples are the failure to incorporate pretension devices. The failure to use hear curtain side air bags is a serious safety flaw.

Failure to Warn of Known Dangers: Many car manufacturers foresaw that when braking proceeds a collision that passengers would raise their hands to brace themselves. Many thousands of arm injuries are suffered each year because people were not warned about the danger of trying to brace themselves during pre-crash braking.

Use of Cheap Sensors: Sensors designed for other uses have been used by some manufacturers to reduce cost.