Most of us who drive on Texas roads do so in a car that we hope will take us safely from one place to another. Most of us try to drive safely to avoid accidents and we make sure everyone in the car uses seat belts, to avoid disaster. Two parts on our cars that we rely on greatly for safety are the tires and the airbags. The tires we hope will keep us out of an accident, while we hope the airbags will protect us if we end up in a crash. Sometimes, however, those parts of the car we rely on become unreliable. In recent years, we have seen numerous reports of defective auto parts such as tires and airbags causing us to question how safe we really are in the average passenger car. What is the problem with these lately and why do we have to worry so much?
Tires
It can be argued that tires are just about the most important parts of any car, since they’re the only part of the vehicle that actually makes contact with the ground. If one blows out or the tread separates, a driver can easily lose control of the vehicle, leading to serious accidents. Unfortunately, tire defects are an all-too-common cause of automobile accidents. Even though tire manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that the tires they make are safe and durable, in a startling number of cases, they fail in this duty.
When a tire is found to be defective, manufacturers are responsible for issuing a recall, but, more often than not, these companies fail to recall their defective products in a timely manner, if they recall the tire at all. Tire manufacturers quite often only recall their tires under specific circumstances and only after their tires have been linked to a series of terrible accidents.
In many cases, when a defective tire fails, it is never even properly identified as the cause of an accident, which means loved ones often have no idea the accident that resulted in the injury or wrongful death of someone they care for was caused by a defective tire.
Airbags
A vehicle’s airbag is a safety device that research has shown to have saved millions of lives over the course of many years. That’s good, because airbags are supposed to save lives, not take them. Although that has been the case for the most part, a number of vehicles have been fitted with air bags of different types that have actually resulted in greater injury or death, rather than less.
Over the past few years, most of the concern over defective airbags has had to do with those manufactured by Takata and installed on millions of vehicles worldwide due to a defective inflator that causes the airbag to inflate with too much force and shoot fast-moving shrapnel into the cabin, directly at the vehicle occupant the airbag is supposed to save. The Takata airbag recall is one of the largest recalls of any auto part in history, but it is by no means the only significant defective airbag issue to ever exist. Over the years, there have been a number of accidents in which airbags have caused serious injuries to eyes, necks and heads, as well as spines and torsos.
There are three general ways in which an airbag can result in an injury during a traffic accident when it’s not shooting metal pieces at passengers. In some cases, a manufacturer simply failed to install airbags in the vehicle at all and the first time the vehicle’s owner realizes it is when they have had an accident. In other cases, the airbags simply fail to deploy. However, the category that leads to the most product liability lawsuits involving airbags comes when an airbag deploys in a low impact crash and that deployment causes a serious injury or death. There are a number of potential causes for this, including improper installation at the factory or a design or manufacturing defect.
Get Help After An Accident Involving Defective Auto Parts in Texas
If you or a loved one have been seriously injured in an auto accident and you believe tires, airbags or any other device on your car designed for safety may have failed, contact the experienced Corpus Christi car accident lawyers at the Gutierrez Law Firm as soon as possible, so that we can evaluate your case and explain to you what happens next.
