Defective Seat Belts, Auto Accidents

Defective seat belts that fail during auto accidents are a major cause for serious personal injury and fatalities in Texas and throughout the United States. Seat belts are designed to keep the vehicle passengers firmly in place during a collision or other traffic accidents, in order to keep the passenger from striking the interior surfaces in the car. Defective seat belts do not properly restrain the occupant, allowing the head and face to crash into the windshield or dashboard. Even in cases where the car is moving at slow speeds, 30 miles an hour or less, a front collision can cause severe injuries to the head and upper body area of an occupant if the seat belts do not provide proper restraint. Typical injuries caused by defective seat belts during serious automobile accidents include head injury, paralysis, spinal cord injury, brain injury and death.

Seat belts also play an important role in keeping the occupant inside the vehicle during an accident. If the seat belt system fails and a passenger is ejected from the vehicle during an accident, then serious injuries can occur. 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 because of defective seat belts that failed during auto accidents.

Seat Belt Defects

Seat belts fail due to both poor design and faulty manufacturing. Typical seat belt defects include; inertial unlatching, false latching, weakened webbing, retractor failure, poor seat belt geometry, vehicle system failure, etc. Studies suggest that millions of cars on the road have defective seat belts, at least to some extent. Unfortunately, the seat belt integrity is not known to be a problem, until after a vehicle occupant is injured in an accident due to the seat belt not providing proper restraint.

Inertial unlatching occurs when the seat belt releases during a collision. The latch button becomes "depressed" during the collision releasing the passenger. False latching occurs when the seat belt appears to have been appropriately latched, but the seat belt releases during an accident. Even small forces can cause a falsely latched seat belt to release. Inappropriate unlatching is typically noted by another passenger in the car who was a witness that an injured passenger had properly latched his or her seat belt, but the seat belt did not provide proper restraint during an accident.

Weakened webbing can occur for a number of reasons. Safety standards require that the seat belt webbing be capable of withstanding forces well in excess of those experienced during vehicle accidents. If the webbing is torn or damaged after the accident, then it may have been defective.

The seat belt retractor is the device the locks during an auto accident and holds the vehicle occupant in place. Obviously if the retractor malfunctions and does not lock properly, the occupant will be released to move forward during a collision. Seat belt retractor failure can occur in a variety of ways. In some cases, the retractor releases a small amount of slack in the seat belt webbing, before locking. Even a few inches of this type of slack can make the difference in some accidents between an injury-free event and catastrophic injuries. Some retractors have so called "window shade" designs, that allow the occupant to create a little slack in the seat belt, such as when leaning forward to adjust the radio. If the retractor allows this slack to stay in the seat belt webbing during an accident, the vehicle occupant may not be properly restrained.

For a seat belt to properly restrain the vehicle occupants, the geometry of the seat belt should be such that during a collision or rollover, the angle between belt and the person should not be too shallow. When seat belt anchors are placed away from the occupant, such as on the floor instead on the seat, this can create a shallow angle. Defective seat belt geometry can allow the occupants to move to excessively toward the roof, thus providing a higher probability of injury during roof crush in a rollover. Poor D-ring locations can also create improper geometry, again leading to shallow angles.

Door mounted seat belts can pose a significant problem, because if the door is lost during an accident, then the occupant can easily be ejected from the vehicle. Also, the so-called "automatic" seat belts can be a problem, because the occupants have the shoulder harness portion around them automatically when they sit in the car and close the door. The occupants assume that they have adequate restraint protection during an accident and they forget or neglect to attach the seat belt around the lap.

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Seat Belt Standards

The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) nos 209, Seat Belt Assemblies, and 210, Seat Belt Assembly Anchorages, apply to the seat belt safety. FMVSS 209 applies to all aspects of the seat belt assemblies, including straps, webbing, buckles, other fasteners and all hardware designed for installing the assembly in the motor vehicle, and to the installation, usage and maintenance instructions for the assembly. FMVSS 210 applies to the requirements for any component of the seat belt assembly, other than the webbing or straps, involved in transferring seat belt loads to the vehicle structure.

In many cases, injuries occur in auto accidents due to a combination of defective design elements in the car, not just one single failure of the seat belts. A combination of defective seat belts, poor seat design and roof crush can often cause devastating injuries.

Many automotive manufacturers have not taken the necessary steps to ensure that the seat belt assemblies and anchorages are not defective and can provide the necessary occupant restraint during an accident. If a person is injured or killed due to a defective seat belt, then the victim or the family members may be entitled to compensation. If you are involved in an accident and suspect that there has been a seat belt failure, you should insure that the vehicle is preserved. If you contact our offices immediately at 1-800-247-7694, we can help with the details of preserving your vehicle. Seat belt defects are particularly difficult to prove, without the direct physical evidence of a torn webbing or other problems. Defective seat belts are an important part of crashworthiness during car accidents.

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