Automobile products liability

When a person makes a claim for personal injury damages which have resulted from the presence of a dangerous or defective automobile, he asserts a Product Liability claim against the automobile's manufacturer and/or the manufacturer of the component part or system.

A major foundation for modern awareness of the defects found in automobiles was laid when Ralph Nader published his book Unsafe at Any Speed about the Chevrolet Corvair and defects found in other vehicles. A focus of this book was the car manufacturers' intentional choice of saving a few dollars for each car instead of providing safe design and manufacture of their products, as well as avoiding the adding of devices which would protect car occupants from injury.

The Ford Pinto gas tank cases present another instance of saving money at the cost of serious injury to consumers. In Grimshaw v Ford (1981) 119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal. Rptr. 348, the California Court of Appeal upheld a jury verdict of $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $125 million in punitive damages (reduced to $3.5 million by the trial court as a condition of denying a motion for new trial). The jury found that Ford Motor Company had known about the unsafe design of the gas tank used in the Pinto, and that this design was an intentional choice by Ford which decided to use a cheaper design which knowingly greatly increased the risk of fire in a rear-impact accident, rather than a more expensive design which would have prevented the death of an occupant.

Unintended acceleration reports resulted in poor publicity for the Audi 5000 in the United States, and more recently in a massive 2010 Toyota Vehicle Recall and suspension of production and sales of many of the most popular Toyota models.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, there was an epidemic of accidents which involved the truck's or car's rolling over as a part of the behavior of the car in the incident. More concerning was the increasing number of "single car accidents" which involved rollovers.

The National Transportation Safety has recognized the danger of rollovers, and the prevalence of rollovers as a result of the defect created by the design of many SUVs. NHTSA has actively campaigned against this design defect and has adopted and promoted its Rollover Resistance Safety Rating, and has actively promoted the adoption of Electronic Stability Control systems.

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Wikipedia