A car company must design its air bags for all reasonably foreseeable users of their vehicles. Since car companies know that some of their customers are of short stature, and since some of those consumers sit close to the steering wheel to be able to control the car, they must design their vehicles and their air bags for these consumers. In fact, the car companies typically design their vehicles with the explicit recognition of short stature drivers who will sit with the seat all the way forward. Remember, everyone whose height is average or taller was at one time of shorter stature. For example, teenagers often fall into this category.

The Society of Automotive Engineers has published an industry standard specifically requiring that cars be designed with this in mind. Crash test dummies representing a 5th percentile adult female have been available for crash testing for more than 20 years. Injury criteria for this crash test dummy were developed by the industry decades ago. Despite this, our research has discovered that some car companies failed to conduct any crash testing with these crash test dummies. Some have claimed that they could not conduct such testing because the government did not incorporate the injury criteria into federal regulations at that time. This argument is completely unpersuasive.

First, the federal regulations are minimum standards, and do not represent the state-of-the-art. A manufacturer has always been free to exceed those standards, and could therefore have conducted such testing. Second, the injury criteria were published within the automotive industry, and the car companies could have utilized those published criteria to evaluate the risk of injury to small stature occupants. Third, if a particular car company disagreed with the published injury criteria, it could have developed its own standards. It is telling that those companies who claim that the injury criteria were not “validated” are the ones who never even tried to evaluate or validate them. Fourth, significant information about crash test dummy kinematics (the motion of the crash test dummy during a crash) could be obtained even if the injury measurements were not made. Fifth, it is well known in the industry that small stature females are at greater risk of air bag inflation-induced injuries. Therefore, it is critical to conduct such testing to make sure the air bag is appropriately designed. In my opinion, the car companies who try to justify their failure to use these small size crash test dummies are merely engaging in a junk science post-hoc rationalization of their failure to comply with industry standards.

Those car companies who failed to conduct appropriate testing with a reasonably foreseeable range of occupant sizes were negligent and reckless. In my opinion, this failure to test was often the result of putting profits ahead of safety. It costs money to conduct this testing. A prototype of an all-new vehicle line can cost as much as $500,000, with the actual test cost adding to the total; this provides an incentive for car companies to skip such testing. If the testing reveals a problem (such as the risk of head, neck or chest injury), it can cost many millions of dollars to fix the problem.
Those companies who fail to conduct appropriate testing create an unfair advantage by saving millions of dollars compared to those who do the right thing and conduct all appropriate testing to ensure their air bag systems work appropriately. We as a society should never reward those companies that put profits ahead of safety.  The law allows consumers to hold those car companies accountable for their defects and for their negligence or recklessness in designing and testing air bags.

Our client was the driver of a 2000 Ford Focus that was hit on the passenger side by a car trying to cut across several lanes of traffic to make a left turn.  Even though the frontal airbags are not designed to deploy in side impacts, his airbag deployed when it shouldn’t have, hit him in the eyes, and blinded him.

The deeper we dug into the Ford Focus airbag design and development process, the more problems we found.  For example, even though Ford told the government that most of its airbags are designed not to deploy below 8 mph in barrier crash tests, the 2000 and 2001 Ford Focus were different: they can deploy even in certain accidents at 6 and 1/2 mph.  This is lower than virtually all other Ford airbag systems from the prior decade.  Incredibly, Ford admitted that it didn’t even know the actual air bag non-deployment threshold when it started selling these cars to its customers!  They later changed the airbag system design to increase the threshold beginning in 2002, but they never recalled the 2000 and 2001 Ford Focus cars to fix this problem.

Additionally, the driver airbag itself lacked internal “tethers”.  Tethers are straps inside the airbag that prevent it from deploying as far toward the driver.  This reduces the risk of injury from the deploying airbag.  In this Ford Focus, however, Ford decided to instead use sewing thread to stitch together parts of the airbag, as a substitute for the tether straps.  Simply put, such stitching is certainly cheaper than tethers, but it doesn’t work nearly as well in reducing airbag injuries.  They certainly didn’t prevent our client from being blinded in one eye.

I think everyone would agree that any reasonable company should always put safety ahead of profits.

Honda recalled nearly 4,000 model year 2001 Honda Civic and Honda Accord cars for a safety defect in its driver air bags.  The chemicals inside the driver air bag inflator caused excessive internal pressure during deployment, which could cause the inflator to rupture.  A ruptured inflator could cause metal chunks to slice through the fabric air bag and hit the consumer.  Obviously, this defect would not only prevent the air bag from properly protecting you, but could also cause injuries, including injuries to your eyes and face.

Honda received claim information and photographs in June 2007 related to this issue, but closed that claim about three months later.  However, four months after that, it began an investigation to identify specific lots of air bag inflator propellant that was suspect.  (A “lot” of inflator propellant is a batch of the chemicals internal to the air bag inflator that is burned to produce the gas that inflates an air bag.)

In September 2008, Honda inspected a vehicle which showed signs of an unusual deployment, apparently confirming their prior suspicion of improperly manufactured air bag inflators.  Honda finally notified the government in November 2008 that it would be conducting this recall on its Honda Civic and Honda Accord models.

The government’s recall number is 08V-593.

BMW has recalled 200,000 of its vehicles for a potentially deadly airbag defect.  It affects certain 2006 BMW 3 series cars (BMW 325i, BMW 325ci, and BMW 330ci), 2004 – 2006 BMW 5 series cars (BMW 525 i, BMW 530i, BMW 545i, and BMW 550i) and 2004-2006 BMW X3 vehicles, depending on the type of seat.

The affected front passenger seats use an occupant detection mat from Siemens as part of an advanced air bag system.  The airbag system uses the data from the mat to determine whether to deploy the front passenger airbags.  Unfortunately, those mats installed in the front passenger seats are vulnerable to cracking along the side of the seat as a result of frequent use.  Some of those cracks could cause a change to the electrical characteristics of the mat.  That electrical change can lead the air bag system to recognize a failure, which can then shut down the passenger air bag system.  If that happens, the passenger air bag can fail to deploy during a crash when it is needed.  According to BMW, this should not affect the head protection system.

The government opened its defect investigation in September 2007.  They upgraded it to an engineering analysis in January 2008, noting that BMW had provided 3,465 owner reports and 28,238 warranty claims.  BMW notified the government that it would conduct this recall in July of 2008.  The government’s recall number is 08V-384.

In one of our cases, our client’s 2002 Buick Century struck another vehicle.  Despite the significant damage to the Buick Century’s front end, the airbags failed to deploy, causing devastating head and spinal cord injuries that resulted in the driver’s wrongful death.  We then initiated an investigation to determine why the airbag did not deploy, and found several explanations.

First, the airbag system failed to include a front end crush-zone sensor, even though earlier models had used such a sensor.  General Motors had apparently considered the use of such an airbag sensor, judging by the screw holes for the sensor that were in the radiator tie bar and the indentation in the plastic cover panel that was made to accommodate the sensor.  However, the front safety sensor was not included within the cars sold to the public by Buick.

Second, this Buick Century was part of GM’s “W” car platform.  Other cars on that same platform included the Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo.  Interestingly, the Chevrolet versions of GM’s “W” cars used an electronic front airbag sensor, even though the Buick version did not.  We never received a satisfactory explanation from General Motors as to why the Buick lacked the front air bag sensor, even though the Chevrolet versions used them.

Incidentally, the air bag ”black box” (which GM calls the SDM, short for Sensing and Diagnostic Module) was helpful to proving our case.  It demonstrated that the driver was indeed wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident.  It also showed that the crash severity was in the range where airbag deployment would have been expected.