No one wants to lose beloved family members or friends simply because their car airbags malfunctioned. Yet highly skilled and inexperienced drivers alike continue to lose their lives this way. Vehicle airbags require vigilant care and maintenance if they’re to protect us from serious road accidents.

If you’ve been injured in an accident when your car’s airbag failed to deploy, you can contact our law firm with your questions. We’ve defended clients injured due to a number of faulty vehicle parts and stand ready to help you obtain the full financial recovery you deserve.

The following list of suggestions and information should help you keep your vehicle’s airbags in good working condition.

• Whenever possible, try and buy a new car. Even “certified” used car lots often fail to provide buyers with functional airbags.
• If you can’t afford to buy a new car, contact the manufacturer of the car you’d like to buy and ask if there’s any way to tell if the vehicle’s airbags are functional without actually trying to deploy them. If you fail to take this added step, you may never know for sure until you’re in an emergency situation.
• Never assume that the airbags alone will save you; always buckle up your seatbelt as well. One government study showed that between 1987 and 2008, airbags and seatbelts combined saved 25,700 lives.
• If you have children aged 13 or younger riding in your vehicle, it’s best to have them sit in the backseat. (Obviously, the youngest ones may need to ride in the types of child car seats required by law).
• When you have your car serviced regularly, ask the dealer how often the airbags should be checked. (If you’d like to learn more about how your car’s airbag sensors determine when they should deploy, you might want to visit the “www.safercar.gov” Web site.
• Usual location of the airbags: The driver’s airbag is usually located in the steering wheel hub; the front passenger’s airbag is usually packed into the dashboard. Side-impact bags can be placed in the doors, the overhead roof rail or in the backs of the seats.
• Always check the “on-off” switches for the airbags each time you enter your car. Airbags aren’t generally recommended for children age 13 or younger.
• Make sure you keep at least 10 inches between your breastbone and where your airbag is stored since they can deploy with tremendous force.
• Smaller adults and the elderly can usually be protected by airbags, although it may be best to have them move their seats back further than most passengers.
• You can learn more about the features of the safest vehicles by visiting the following Web site run by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety: http://www.iihs.org/

When you contact our firm, please know that we’ll make every effort to ease your concerns about your recent accident and answer all of your questions. We’ve got the experience and the extended law firm personnel to handle each case in a highly professional manner.

If we fail to come up with new, meaningful restrictions on driving while talking on cell phones, far too many of us may wind up seriously injured or killed in auto accidents. While we may be old enough to drive, we don’t seem to have the necessary patience to drive a bit further (in non-emergency situations) to find a safe place to pull over and use our cell phones. By allowing this type of laziness, we endanger ourselves, our passengers, pedestrians, cyclists and everyone else out on the road.

In a recent New York Times article, Matt Richtel noted that it took a Freedom of Information lawsuit to obtain federal government research indicating how dangerous it is for Americans to combine cell phone use with driving. (Interested readers can download a copy of this lengthy study.) The following are some of the facts, arguments and danger estimates contained in that research:

• About 955 deaths were likely caused in 2002 by Americans who were using their cell phones will driving;
• Two-hundred and forty thousand (240,000) – or nearly a quarter of a million accidents, were caused by drivers who were talking on their cell phones at the time of their accidents;
• Just passing “hands-free” laws allowing cell phone users to keep talking on their phones if they aren’t actually holding them is an inadequate remedy;
• It’s all about focus. Everyone knows that human conversations can turn upsetting, argumentative or extremely challenging at any second. This reality robs drivers of the constant focus they need to avoid careless driving choices;
• Those who drive and talk on the phone are about four times more likely to cause an accident than those who refrain from “multi-tasking” or chatting on the phone while behind the wheel;
• People who talk on their cell phones while driving are about as likely to cause an accident as an individual driver with a blood alcohol content of 0.8;
• What’s even more frightening is that this research was based on the assumption that only six percent (6%) of drivers use their phones while driving at any given time. It’s now thought that this figure is closer to about twelve percent (12%);
• While some of the data may have been incomplete and lacking precision, the researchers who called for a more extensive study to be conducted immediately may have been urged to not voice their strong opinions – perhaps for political reasons. (See: “Driven to Distraction.“)

However, you personally view the research now being fully released to the public, we think you’ll probably agree with us that it’s time we all start thinking about greatly limiting our cell phone use while driving.

We hope you’ve never been injured in an accident when either a friend or stranger was driving while talking on a cell phone. However, if you have, or know someone else who has, please let them know that we have the skills and lengthy legal experience to represent clients injured in such auto accidents.