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Defective Airbags
An airbag is a type of supplemental safety device that is designed to provide additional safety to passengers in an automobile during a any accident or crash. Although not intended as primary safety devices, rather as a supplement to seat belts and other safety features of an automobile, airbags reduce the chance that an occupant's upper body or head will strike the vehicle's interior during a crash. Both frontal and side-impact air bags are designed to deploy in moderate to severe crashes.
However, 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. 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. 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 could have been prevented. With the rapid production 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. Defective airbags are in cars everywhere, and drivers often don’t discover this until it is too late.
Fast Facts
| Injury type: | Auto accident injuries due to defective or non-functioning airbags. |
| Causes: | Airbags which deploy at the wrong time or do not deploy at all at the time of an accident. |
| Prevention: | Be aware of any airbag recalls or safety precautions surrounding potential airbag failure. |
| Treatment: | May require hospitalization due to serious defective airbag injury. |
| Related topics: | Automobile Accidents, Traumatic Brain Injury |
