Another vehicle pulled out of a side street directly into the path of our client’s 2005 Ford Taurus. The resulting accident caused the driver air bag in the Taurus to deploy, inducing significant injuries to the neck, face and eye, including facial bone fractures, nasal fractures, cervical spine injuries, diplopia, and other facial trauma.

According to the data from the black box (Restraints Control Module), the driver seat belt was buckled, but there was a fault within the driver seat belt pretensioner at the time of the collision. Our investigation also revealed a concern regarding whether the air bag should have deployed at all.  Furthermore, the evidence indicated that the driver air bag deployed at a higher force level than it should have, and that the actual deployment time was later than it should have been.

The driver of another vehicle in an oncoming lane veered into our client’s lane, causing a head-on frontal crash. Although the crash was severe, the driver airbag did not deploy, and the driver suffered lung, heart and other chest injuries that proved fatal.

2000 Ford Taurus Airbag Failed to Deploy

 A download of the vehicle’s Restraint Control Module (the “black box”) documented the failure of the front crash sensor during the crash. My inspection of that crash sensor revealed that its wiring had been cut.  This had occurred early in the crash, right near where the crash sensor was mounted.

Airbag Sensor Cut Wire

Evidence gathered during our investigation indicated that the air bag system was programmed in a way that “shut off” the airbag if the sensor wire were cut during an accident.  In my opinion, this should never have happened.  First of all, a front airbag crash sensor should be mounted in a way that protects its wiring from being cut during a crash, since it is certainly foreseeable that the front crush zone of a car will be damaged during a frontal crash.  Second, even if the wiring gets cuts, there is no reason to shut off the entire airbag system.  Instead, the airbag control module that contains an accelerometer should still continue to function; if the airbag safety sensor within the control module detects the crash, it can still deploy the airbags.  Why deprive the consumer of the safety benefit of the airbags?

Although this was apparently fixed in later models, this particular vehicle had not been recalled to correct this problem.  There is absolutely no excuse for such a decision.  If you have a known problem, just fix it.  Why wait until more people suffer serious personal injuries or death before correcting this safety defect?

Ford recalled numerous vehicles for a manufacturing defect in passenger air bag inflators.   The vehicles include the 1995 Ford Countour, 1995 Ford Crown Victoria, 1995 Ford Explorer, 1995 Ford Mustang, 1995 Ford Probe, 1995 Ford Windstar, 1995 Lincoln Town Car, 1995 Mercury Grand Marquis, and the 1995 Mercury Mystique.

The manufacturing defect resulted in the inflator being cracked during the process of securing the igniter inside the inflator.  This can cause two different safety problems if the airbag inflates during an accident.  First, the passenger airbag may not inflate properly, since some of the gas will escape from the inflator and will not fully pressurize the bag.  Second, those hot gases that escape can cause burn injuries to a consumer and can ignite flammable materials, resulting in a fire.

The inflator manufacturers are required to conduct certain quality control testing for every batch of airbag inflators.  That testing includes “lot acceptance testing”; parts are not supposed to be shipped from the supplier’s airbag manufacturing facility until those tests are successfully passed.  There are also other quality controls and process control standards that are supposed to be met before those parts are shipped.

This is yet another instance where, despite promises of strict quality control, defects are not caught during the production process.  This means the defective parts are not identified, and are instead installed into consumers’ vehicles.

The government’s recall number is 95E-006002.