Car crashes cause some of the worst injuries I see as a personal injury attorney and sadly often result in death. We buy cars so that we will be protected in a crash, so it is disheartening to see that cars themselves are often the cause of injuries. I sometimes meet clients who failed to attain legal advice regarding a life-altering injury. These folks lost so much due to their car-related injury, yet simple mistakes kept them from being compensated. A simple mistake can mean the loss of your home and financial ruin for your family. I wrote the following blog post to help individuals and families avoid costly mistakes when their car causes significant injury or death.
If you have been injured, you must find experienced counsel to help you attain your fair share of compensation for your loss of income and injury. Barrett Law has the experience to help you if you have been injured. Contact us now at (800) 707-9577.
Overview of Three Types of Automobile Related Claims—Crashworthiness, Design, and Manufacturing Flaws
Not everyone who gets in a car accident has a valid claim against an automobile manufacturer. To establish liability, an injured party must show some negligence on the part of the manufacturer. Negligence generally means that a person knew or should have known of a risk and failed to take steps to avoid that risk. In the automotive context, that means that the manufacturer was negligent regarding the car’s crashworthiness, design, or manufacturing. Clients here Mississippi often have questions regarding the difference between these three theories of negligence, so I have described each one in some detail below.
Crashworthiness
You have likely seen commercials where car companies show off their crash-dummy filled cars surviving horrific impacts. While those images were made to get you to buy that car, that sort of crash testing is critical to establishing the car’s actual safety rating. Many advances in car design—seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones—have increased passengers’ chances of surviving even an extreme impact. Claims against car manufacturers alleging failures to ensure crashworthiness usually focus on one of the car’s safety features failing to work during a crash. At its core, a crashworthiness claim argues that a person in an accident should have survived given the manufacturer’s claims regarding the car’s safety systems.
Design Failures
Recent history is full of examples of poorly designed cars. Those design problems frequently resulted in tragic results. Whether it was cars that tipped over at certain speeds or had airbags that propelled deadly shards of plastic at passengers, design flaws have proven to be fatal. If you were injured by your car, it may be because of a problem with its design. You can recover compensation for your injuries if it can be shown that the manufacturer was negligent in selling the vehicle with this design flaw.
Manufacturing Failures
Sometimes vehicles are designed by the manufacturer to be safe, but the car is actually built incorrectly. This is a manufacturing flaw, which means that an otherwise well-designed car was made unsafe due to a mistake in the manufacturing process that rendered the car unreasonably dangerous. For example, if a cheaper, weaker metal is used instead of the specified type, part failure and serious injuries may ensue.
What Should You Do If You or a Loved One Has Been Injured?
If you or a loved one was injured by a car, you might have a viable claim against the automobile manufacturer for compensation for your injuries, loss of work, and other harm. As I explained above, claims can be made based on crashworthiness, design defects, manufacturing defects, and other negligence claims. Let experienced counsel take care of attaining statements and analysis from expert witnesses and dealing with the automobile company’s legal team. These are essential tasks that a personal injury attorney can handle for you while you concentrate on healing.
Call Barrett Law now, an experienced Mississippi personal injury law firm, to represent you if you have suffered an injury in a car crash. Contact us now at (800) 707-9577.
