Your Car’s Design Probably Is Not the Reason You Got Injured in a Car Accident
Product liability is a real thing. You have the right to sue a car manufacturer if a vehicle defect causes an accident or results in more serious injuries that you would have suffered in a similar accident if the offending car part had been functioning properly. This is why car manufacturers send out safety recall notices when testing reveals that a certain batch of parts may contain a defect. They want you to get the potentially faulty parts replaced, at the manufacturer’s expense, because this is less expensive for them than if the parts malfunction and injured consumers file product liability lawsuits. In fact, some car design features have disappeared from the market entirely because they were too dangerous and caused too many injuries, and product liability lawsuits often play a role in the removal of dangerous features from car designs. As a result, today’s cars are much safer than the ones your parents first learned to drive. If you have been injured in a car accident, despite the car having the newest safety features, contact a Fort Lauderdale auto accident attorney.
Be Thankful for Your Car’s Collapsable Zones
Sometimes you drive past the scene of a car accident and see a car with its front or rear bumper crumpled. It looks horrifying, but better that the car’s structure should take the impact than the people inside. An auto body shop can make the car good as new more easily so that physicians can restore people to health after a direct impact at anything above a crawling speed. Automobiles have collapsible zones in the front or back so that, if someone strikes your car, the impact is not so close to you. Cars did not always have these. Before the Motown era, when big cars were a status symbol, there was less vehicle structure in the front and back of cars to protect passengers. In fact, for a brief period in the early days, cars’ rear bumpers were little more than balloons.
The Steering Columns of Yesteryear Were the Stuff of Nightmares
Your car’s steering column has an inflatable airbag inside, but that is not the only reason that it is less dangerous than the steering columns of bygone times. The plastic material of today’s steering columns is soft enough that it acts as a collapsable zone when necessary. Before the 1970s, steering columns were made of metal, which, as you can imagine, caused some horrific injuries, as did the decorative accessories that protruded from steering wheels. Of course, no one misses the brief fad in the early 1960s when manufacturers thought that dinner plate-sized steering wheels obstructed drivers’ views of the road, so they replaced them with two tiny wheels, so that steering them was like trying to steer a remote control, except that you were inside.
Set Up a Consultation Today
A car accident lawyer can help you file a claim against the at fault driver or negligent car manufacturer after a car accident. Contact Boone & Davis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida or call 954-566-919 to explore your potential recovery options today.
Source:
msn.com/en-us/autos/classic-cars/12-risky-car-features-from-the-1950s-to-1980s-that-were-thankfully-removed/ss-AA1rY10D?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=c3ba1fbf3a9846a585ac3d9f91e78c45&ei=20#image=13
