Legal Help With Car Accidents Where Airbag Didn’t Deploy
If you were in a car accident and your airbag failed to deploy, causing severe injuries, you may have a viable case to sue. Legal action could be taken against the automobile manufacturer, airbag manufacturer, or other parties that could be found liable in the matter.
Like many situations, the best course of action after taking care of your health is to seek legal advice from a car accident attorney. A professional attorney can analyze and investigate your situation and determine if you have a case.
Why Did My Airbag Fail to Work?
The reason for the airbag failing to deploy in an accident is paramount to your case. If it is determined that the accident should have caused it to deploy, and you were injured due to it not deploying, you will have a case to sue pending discussion with an attorney.
Some of the top reasons that an airbag didn’t deploy:
Type of accident. The details of the accident itself will provide some clues as to why the airbag did not deploy. Specific impacts may not trigger the sensors to deploy, meaning the airbag does not come out. This can be common in rollover collisions, where front airbags do not deploy.
Defective airbag sensors. If it is determined that the collision should have triggered an airbag to deploy, but it did not, the airbag sensors may be the reason. The manufacturer may have installed, designed or tested them incorrectly, causing the real-world failure. The sensors could also have been calibrated poorly, or there may not have been enough sensors in place to sense the collision.
Defective electrical systems. There are a multitude of possible electrical reasons why an airbag may not have deployed in an accident. Again, faulty design or placement of electrical components could be the reason for the failure to deploy. It’s possible that the electrical components don’t allow the airbag sensor to receive the information, causing them not to deploy. The wires that run these systems could also have been placed in a non-optimal position, causing them to be severed in an accident and not work properly.
Airbag module defects. The airbag module is essentially the airbag system’s brain, so any faulty component could lead to an airbag that doesn’t deploy. Design and manufacturing defects can play a role in this, with multiple systems in the module all needing to work for the airbag to properly deploy.
How Can I Prove Liability for My Airbags Not Working?
When airbags don’t work in a car crash, and there are injuries involved, certain things need to be proven to have a viable case. Among others, you will need to prove that:
- The airbags should have deployed in your accident.
- You suffered injuries that were caused or made worse by the airbag failing to deploy
- You suffered damages – financial, physical, or emotional.
To help prove the liability in a vehicle airbag case, it may be necessary to bring in experts to speak to the nature of the crash and the failure of the airbag, in addition to your injures. These experts could include:
- Doctors
- Accident reconstruction team
- Engineers and product designers
Get Help If Your Airbag Didn’t Work in a Crash
If your airbag didn’t deploy in an accident and you were subsequently injured, it’s important to get a car accident attorney involved. The experts at Bighorn Law work with product liability cases like this every day and can help. The conversation about your situation is free and if you go with us, there are no fees unless you win.