SUV Rollover Accidents: Kentucky Injury Lawyer Update
This is follow-up post on the Ford Explorer Rollover report from Kentucky Injury Lawyer Blog contributor, auto accident attorney, Shawn Cantley. To see the original post, click here:
Ford Explorer Rollover Accidents: Kentucky Injury Lawyer Special Report
According to the NHTSA, vehicle rollover wrecks account for only four percent of crashes but represent 35 percent of all vehicle occupant fatalities, killing 10,800 and seriously injuring more than 16,000 people per year. Rollover crashes could be more survivable if vehicles had stronger roofs, but the auto industry has vigorously opposed any improvement to the 1971 roof strength standard, even though, according to experts and consumer groups such as Public Citizen, its engineers know the importance of roof strength in surviving rollover crashes.
Why is the roof strength so important in a rollover? When a vehicle is upside-down, the roof becomes the vehicle’s backbone. When that backbone crushes, all the other important protection systems collapse as well. These include shoulder-lap belts, which in some SUVs like the Ford Explorer are anchored to the top of the vertical pillar behind the front door; side windows, which break, allowing occupants to be flung out of the vehicle; the windshield, which breaks, allowing the front part of the roof to collapse; and side-window air bags for the head, whose effectiveness can be undercut once the roof crushes in or the windows break. The current NHTSA standards do not have any requirements concerning the performance of belts, air bags or windows in rollovers.
This is important for many reasons. One often missed but significant problem with insufficient roof strength is that first responders such as police officers often report that an occupant was not wearing a seatbelt when they are thrown from a car or SUV in a rollover. These reports end up in statistics which are relied upon by the auto manufactures to claim that people die in rollover accidents because they are themselves negligent in not wearing a seatbelt. However, the person may have been wearing a seatbelt that failed due to insufficient roof strength.
"Good forensics (such as an autopsy by a highly diligent and trained medical examiner and/or a good accident reconstructionist or engineer), if done early, can provide evidence that the person was, in fact, wearing a seat belt," said Kentucky accident attorney Shawn Cantley, "but, quite understandably, the grieving family members often take the accident report at face value and forensics are not done."
More information on seat belt failure in SUV rollover accidents can be found at this link: Public Citizen Report on Seatbelt Failure in SUV Rollovers.
For more information about car wreck and SUV rollover forensics or law in Kentucky or Indiana, please contact Shawn Cantley or one of the experienced injury attorneys at kentuckyinjurylaw.com.
