My airbag didn't deploy, or my seatbelt failed. Do I have a case against the carmaker?

The doctrine: two cases riding in one crash

Crashes are foreseeable to the people who build cars, which is why the law requires vehicles to be crashworthy, designed and built to protect occupants when the foreseeable happens. The crashworthiness, or enhanced injury, doctrine holds a manufacturer responsible not for causing the collision but for the injuries its product's failure added to it: the difference between the outcome the safety systems should have delivered and the outcome you lived. The result is two cases traveling together, the ordinary negligence case against the driver who caused the crash, and a product liability case against the manufacturer whose restraint, structure, or system failed, with the defendants pointing at each other and a jury sorting the shares.

The failures that signal a case

Certain patterns should always be investigated: airbags that never fired in a significant frontal impact, or fired late or with excessive force; seatbelts that unlatched, spooled out, or left an occupant unbelted-looking despite being worn, ejection of a belted occupant is a five-alarm signal; seatbacks that collapsed rearward, sending front occupants into the rear compartment, a special horror in cases with children behind; roofs that crushed in rollovers a modern structure should survive; doors that opened, fuel systems that burned. The unifying tell is disproportion: a catastrophic injury in a crash the vehicle's safety systems were built, and marketed, to manage.

The vehicle is the case, and the salvage yard is the trap

Every one of these theories is proven inside the vehicle: the airbag control module's data recording deployment decisions and crash forces, the belt webbing and buckle mechanisms, the deformed structure itself, examined by engineers against exemplar vehicles. And every day, insurers total these vehicles and auction them to salvage while the family is still at the hospital. The single most important act in a suspected crashworthiness case is stopping that: notify the insurer in writing that the vehicle must be preserved, buy the salvage back if that is what it takes, and store it untouched until engineers have seen it. Repose periods, comparative fights, and federal-standard defenses all come later; without the vehicle, nothing comes at all.

When to make the call

If the injury outran the crash, if the airbag light was on before, if the belt marks are missing, if anyone was ejected or a seatback failed, say so at the consultation and say it before the vehicle disappears. Silver Key Law screens crash cases for the product case hiding inside them as a matter of routine, and the consultation is free.

Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.

Related: Defective Product Cases · Total Loss & Vehicle Value · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions

This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.