A crashworthy vehicle has features that aid in protecting the driver and passengers during a collision. While there is no guarantee that you will escape an automobile accident completely unscathed, safety features like seat belts, air bags, and strong roofs make a vehicle crashworthy.

Airbags that fail to deploy, defective airbags, or improper airbag deployment can cause serious eye injuries and permanent damage. In some cases partial (or even total) blindness has resulted. Many of these injuries occur due to direct contact with the deploying airbag (while it is still in a ball) or from impact with particles at a high speed that are released during (projected by the) airbag deployment. In response to this, it is necessary that research be conducted using crash dummies with "eye ball models" in order determine how these injuries are occurring and what can be done to prevent injury by proper airbag deployment angles and design of the airbag shape.

In addition, the age and size of the vehicle occupants can have a significant impact on injury profiles, including deaths caused by airbags. For example, a recent study showed that teenage occupants should stay out of the front seat of cars equiped with airbags, unless they are large enough to actually be driving behind the wheel of the car. Furthermore, car seats should NEVER be positioned facing an airbag in the front seat, as this could cause severe injury to an infant in a front seat positioned child seat. Children who are under the age of 15 are at a significantly high risk for fatal or at least serious injury from air bags when those children are seated in the front passenger seat during car crashes. In those cases, the airbag fails to protect the occupant and can even injure the occupant.

Our Philadelphia area auto accident lawyers have the knowledge and experience to help establish the crashworthiness of your vehicle. Vehicle manufacturers are legally responsible for providing crashworthy cars, trucks, and SUVs. When a manufacturing defect causes a vehicle to be less than crashworthy, the manufacturer can be brought into a product liability case and sued for damages by attorneys such as our Philadelphia area auto accident lawyers. Seatbelts that fail to restrain, air bags that don't deploy when needed or cause injury when they do, a lack of roll bars in a vehicle with a high center of gravity, or defective tires are some of the factors that will cause a vehicle to be less than crashworthy.