Accidents Caused Faulty Air Bags

Sometimes safety precautions can be dangerous. Front air bags in a motor vehicle, meant to break the blow of a hard-hitting accident to the driver and passenger seat, can be more dangerous than helpful, despite their intention to keep the person from being ejected from the car through the windshield.

In fact, according to a publication abstract of the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health (NIH), front air bags were not deployed in approximately 18 percent of accidents that were fatal for a front occupant of the vehicles studied. This seems an extremely high percentage when considering that air bags are required by law and strictly regulated.

Also reported in the NIH abstract, one to two-percent of such front occupant fatalities could have been avoided had the frontal air bag deployed. This means that system failure in the vehicle resulted in death in one to two-percent of crashes fatal for the front occupant. And with that said, child passengers in the front seat are more likely to be killed by a frontal air bag. Noted in a different publication abstract from the NIH, “reports of eight deaths of child passengers in crashes involving air bag deployment are of special concern because they involved low-speed crashes that the children otherwise might have survived.”

Injuries Caused by Faulty Air Bags

There are several injuries that a car occupant can experience from an air bag, that are sometimes separate from the injuries one may sustain in an accident. The US National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health warns that the most common injuries caused by airbags are injuries to the eyes and states, “Although most injuries are self-limited and do not significantly compromise vision, some result in severe, permanent visual loss.”

Consult a Chicagoland Car Accident Attorney

If you or someone you know has been injured by a faulty air bag deployment in a Chicago-area car accident, you may be eligible for compensation. Do not go through it alone. Contact a Chicago auto accident lawyer at the law offices of Salvi & Maher, LLP today.