by Barnaby Meins

Created on: December 29, 2008   Last Updated: December 16, 2010

Vehicles are the primary means of land transport today. Vehicular accidents, however, are inevitable due to various causes. Imagine a driver in an accident who sustained severe spinal injuries due to failure of airbag inflation. In such a case, he may be able to sue the manufacturer for crashworthiness.

Crashworthiness is defined as the ability of a vehicle to protect the driver and passengers in an accident. It is considered a kind of vehicle liability where vehicle manufacturers are made responsible for the vehicle they produce.

In 1966, Congress approved the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act to require vehicle manufacturers to take into consideration some aspects of crashworthiness. This Act created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which put into place standards that vehicle manufacturers must meet to receive a crashworthiness rating for different types of crashes. However, these are baseline standards and thus not exhaustive. The ratings are obtained by testing the vehicles for their performance in frontal collisions, side-impact crashes and rear-impact crashes.

As a result of these standards, the law has recognized that vehicle manufacturers have to take reasonable, practicable and compulsory measures that will ensure the ability of their manufactured vehicles to promise passenger safety in accidents.

In a vehicle liability claim, to determine if a person's injuries in a vehicular accident is due to the lack of crashworthiness, the plaintiff (party who sues the manufacturer, which is the defendant) must establish that:

1) the vehicle was defective when ownership of the manufacturer was handled over

2) this defective condition made the vehicle unreasonably dangerous and it intensified the injuries suffered in the accident

4) the vehicle was being utilized in a expected means at the time the injuries were sustained

5) the manufacturer was engaged in the business of selling or distributing motor vehicles.

As can be seen, the crashworthiness principle imposes vehicle liability on a vehicular manufacturer for causing the injuries to be more severe and not minimizing any injuries in an accident. It does not make the manufacturer accountable for causing the accident. The plaintiff can only sue for enhanced injuries, which refers to injuries that he can demonstrate he would not have suffered if he was in a crashworthy vehicle. On the other hand, if such injuries cannot be proven, then the manufacturer does not have any vehicle liability

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