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Seatback Failures
Front occupant seatbacks play a vital safety role in rear-end crashes, similar to the purpose of airbags and seatbelts in frontal impacts. In a rear impact, a front seat should be designed to absorb energy and contain the occupant in the front seating space. Weak, defective front seats can fail, collapse and cause front occupants […]
Seatback Failures
Front occupant seatbacks play a vital safety role in rear-end crashes, similar to the purpose of airbags and seatbelts in frontal impacts. In a rear impact, a front seat should be designed to absorb energy and contain the occupant in the front seating space. Weak, defective front seats can fail, collapse and cause front occupants to catapult into the rear of the vehicle. This creates a dangerous hazard to both the front occupant and anyone in the rear seat behind the occupant.
There is a misconception that in a seatback failure the seat must “break.” Many times, a component part may break; however, it is common that a defective seat may not have any broken parts. The “failure” is the seating system’s failure to safely contain an occupant in the front occupant space. Weak seats may dynamically and rapidly yield rearward regardless of whether a part breaks.
The exact failure in a seatback is difficult to determine until the seat is detrimmed – the cushioning is removed to reveal the structure of the seat. Common failures include: rapid yielding which leads to collapse; recliner failure; seat track failure; failure of the bolts connecting the seat to the floor; a broken weld; an inadvertent latch; and a head restraint failure.
The “recliner” is the mechanism that adjusts the seatback. Some vehicles have single recliners although most newer cars utilize recliners on both sides of the seat (dual recliners). A recliner should provide sufficient rearward resistance in a rear impact. When a recliner fails, the seating system as a whole dangerously collapses.
An “inadvertent unlatching” failure is a design defect that leads the seat to disengage releasing the recliner mechanism result in a collapse of the seating system.
If the headrest is broken or pulled out in a rear-end impact, it should raise a red flag for a “head restraint” failure. The headrest should be designed in conjunction with the seatback to support the occupant and prevent the occupant from ramping. When the seat yields rearward and a front occupant loads the headrest, weak and defective head restraints may pull out or break. Another key piece of evidence is the head restraint “guide sleeves” – the plastic pieces at the top of the seatback where the head restraint prongs are inserted into the seatback. In a head restraint failure, the guide sleeves my break.
https://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/nhtsa-ready-strengthen-seat-backs
Defective Passenger Presence System Causes Airbag Non-Deployment
A vehicle’s Passenger Presence System “PPS” is used to monitor the type of occupant that is sitting in the front passenger seat to determine whether to enable or suppress the deployment of the front passenger airbag. The PPS is designed to reduce injuries to smaller occupants from the deployment of airbags by utilizing sensors in the front passenger seat to gather information related to the occupant’s weight and the kind of pressure placed on the seat. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 requires that the system enable the passenger airbag when a person weighs between 103 and 113 pounds and is between 55 and 59 inches tall is seated in the front passenger seat. However, the PPS can fail to correctly determine that an adult is seated in the front passenger seat, and in turn, can improperly deactivate the front airbag, increasing the risk of serious or fatal injury in a car collision.
During the crash, if the driver’s front airbag properly deploys allowing the driving to walk away with minor injuries, but the front passenger airbag fails to deploy resulting in the adult passenger sustaining serious injuries, there has most likely been a defect in the PPS. Investigation begins with crash data retrieval “CDR” to determine if the subject collision was recorded as a “deployment” event and properly commanded the vehicle to deploy both airbags. If the CDR shows that the PPS has misclassified an adult front seat passenger as a child which results in a serious injury to the adult passenger, there is a potential claim for defective failure of the PPS provided that front passenger had on a seatbelt, had a reasonable seat position, and the CDR shows that the vehicle’s longitudinal delta-v was above the threshold for deployment for the airbag.
Fire Propagation Defects in Survivable Crashes
Fuel system design is critical to preventing fuel-fed fires during a car crash. A vehicle should be designed so that a fire outside of it should not have a ready pathway to enter the occupant compartment. However, auto manufacturers commonly create pathways by running wiring through the firewall of the engine compartment or creating holes in the body of the vehicle for venting purposes. Often, these holds are exceptionally large so that vehicles can be manufactured cheaper and faster, e.g., instead of a 1/2 inch diameter opening for a small grouping of wires, the manufacturer uses a 3 inch diameter opening.
The problem with creating holes in the engine firewall or in the body of the vehicle for venting purposes is that many times manufactures fail to take additional steps to make sure these openings are fire safe. In fact, many times the material used to seal the openings are a combustible rubber or plastic which serves as fuel for the potential fire. Fire resistant materials have long been used in other applications, e.g., homes, and should also be used in vehicles. These materials allow air to pass through unless exposed to heat or flame, at which time they melt to seal the opening and prevent fire and smoke propagation.
Pre-pandemic there were nearly 170,000 highway vehicles fires every year in the United States. Although this is less than other types of fires, vehicle fires are more likely to result in fatalities. Vehicles fires kill nearly seven people every week; cause 1,300 injuries every year; and $1.1 billion in property damage every year according to the U.S. Fire Administration. With these statistics, it only makes sense that manufacturers would, at a minimum, use fire resistant materials when creating holes in the engine firewall and body of the vehicle for venting purposes.
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The Arizona personal injury, accident, and insurance bad faith dispute lawyers at the Law Offices of Shane L. Harward PLC represent insurance, personal injury and accident victims throughout the state of Arizona (AZ) including, but not limited to, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale, Gilbert, Sun West, Sun City, Tucson, Flagstaff, Kingman, Bullhead City, Yuma, Lake Havasu, Fountain Hills, Anthem, Ahwatukee, Carefree, Cave Creek, Gold Canyon, Bisbee, Sierra Vista, Cochise, Paradise Valley, East Valley, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Gila, White Mountain, Heber, Payson, Prescott, Forest Lakes, Apache Junction, Avondale, Queen Creek, Benson, Black Canyon City, New River, Buckeye, Casa Grande, Coolidge, Cottonwood, Douglas, Florence, Gila Bend, Goodyear, Greer, Glendale, Lakeside, Guadalupe, Holbrook, Huachuca City, Oro Valley, Overgaard, Avra Valley, Parker, Peoria, Pinetop, Pine, Prescott Valley, Quartzite, Strawberry, Safford, Show Low, Sun City West, Sun Lakes, Superior, Surprise, Snowflake, Tombstone, Wickenburg, Winslow, Wilcox, Williams, Young, Youngtown, and surrounding areas.