An Air Bag Failure Can Be Deadly
When you’re in a car, truck, or van your safety is ensured by both seatbelts and airbags, which are designed to operate together. Airbags should deploy in moderate to severe crashes, and they are designed to reduce the chance that your head and upper body will strike somewhere in a vehicle’s interior. If your vehicle is involved in an accident and airbag failure happens, you and your passengers could be badly injured or even killed as a result.
Vehicles can be equipped with either side (SAB) or front (FAB) air bags. All cars made after 1998, and pickups and vans after 1999, are required to at least have front airbags. SABs are now offered as either standard or optional equipment on many vehicles too.
How Can Airbags Fail?
Airbags, while designed to protect, can sometimes fail. They can fail at the airbags on/off switch, the electronic control that sends signals to the inflator, the igniter in the inflator that starts the chemical reaction that fills the bag with harmless gas, or the panel that opens to deploy the bag. Airbags open within 1/20th of a second, which is very fast, and this fast deployment can lead to severe or fatal injuries. Most of these injuries result from the passenger being too close to the bag when it opens, causing an individual to come into contact with the extreme force of the bag’s rapid inflation. This is why it is recommended that children under the age of 13 always sit in the back seat of a vehicle.
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Why Do Airbags Fail?
Airbag failure is serious, and may cause life threatening injuries. Why do airbags fail to deploy? The crash wasn’t detected by your vehicle’s system, the vehicle turned off the airbag if the person in front was detected to be small-stature or a child, or a bag may not have been replaced after a previous crash, or the airbag may even be a fake, counterfeit replacement part! Major airbag failure recalls have been issued for Takata airbags that have inflator issues. These inflators could explode or cause the airbag not to inflate properly. Affected vehicles include Toyota, BMW, Audi, Honda, Mitsubishi, and the Isuzu Oasis. You can find out if your vehicle is under recall by going to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) recall web page.
While it is our hope that you never experience airbag failures during an accident, if you or your loved ones are injured in a crash due to airbag failure, let the South Carolina airbag failure litigation attorneys at the Anastopoulo Law firm represent you to get compensation you may be entitled to due to injury, medical bills, or lost time at work. Call us at 1-800-777-777.
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