FATAL AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS ARE THE LEADING CAUSE
OF TEENAGE/YOUNG ADULT DEATHS WORLDWIDE
The World Health Organization released a report in April 2007 stating that a fatal automobile accident is the leading cause of death among teens and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24 worldwide. The organization promoted a long list of suggestions such as safer roads and vehicles, helmet laws, prosecution of speeders and drunk drivers and better education for drivers and pedestrians. Some of the more interesting but troubling findings from the WHO report and United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention note that fatal auto accidents are the leading cause of accidents between ages 10 and 24 worldwide.
Approximately 30% of all auto accident fatalities involve individuals under age 25.
Auto accidents result in annual costs of over $500 billion worldwide in medical care, disability and property damage.
In the United States, about 2 out of every 5 deaths for teens are caused by auto accidents.
Drivers between ages 16 and 19 in the United States are four times more likely than older drivers to be involved in an accident. In the United States and Pennsylvania, drunk driving is the leading criminal cause of death. There were approximately 17,000 victims of drunk driving accidents last year. Approximately 40% of all motor vehicle fatalities are alcohol related. Frequent drunk drivers are responsible for almost 60% of all alcohol related fatalities. In 2007, drivers between the ages of 16 and 20 were involved in 1,719 drunk driving accidents. In 2006 in Pennsylvania, there were 13,616 alcohol-related crashes, with 545 alcohol-related deaths. 78% of the drinking drivers involved in these accidents were male. On an average day in Pennsylvania, 37 alcohol-related crashes occur injuring 29 people and on an average day, 1.5 people were killed in an alcohol-related car crash in Pennsylvania. Interesting to note that on the holidays, 15% of all crashes involve alcohol usage. In the United States, alcohol-related motor crashes kill someone every 31 minutes and injure someone every 2 minutes.
In Pennsylvania, non-commercial drivers age 21 plus are considered legally drunk when their blood alcohol level is .08% or greater. Commercial drivers are considered legally drunk when their blood alcohol concentration is .04% or greater. School bus drivers are legally drunk when their blood alcohol level is .02% or more. Drivers under 21 are considered legally drunk when their blood alcohol concentration is .02% or more. NTSHA, the national highway and transportation safety authority, has reported that there is one fatality every 12 minutes, one injury every 12 seconds and one property damage crash every 8 seconds, with one law enforcement reported crash every 5 seconds. Surprisingly, we are learning that motor vehicle accident fatalities and injuries are on the decrease. However, they still remain an every day occurrence. Despite technological advances and educational efforts by public and private organizations, defective design of a vehicle still plays an essential role in automobile accidents. We rely on automobile manufacturers to make safe automobiles. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. In these situations, a vehicle design defect or flaw can contribute to an accident. For example, an SUV rollover accident, faulty original equipment or aftermarket equipment could be to blame. Insurance industry statistics show that people in all but the heaviest SUV’s have higher death rates in single vehicle accidents, mostly due to vehicle rollover. Rollovers accounted for 36% of all fatal crashes.
We have seen many cases where people are the victim of a defective seatbelt injury, even when properly used, due to poor manufacturing or design. Such defects or malfunctions include initial unlatching, “inertial unlatching”, which takes place when the seat belt becomes unlatched during a collision. Buckles without a lock for the latch design are more susceptible to inertial unlatching in which the latch plate pulls out of the seat belts buckle. There is another design defect with seat belts known as false latching which occurs when a seatbelt buckle appears to be closed but is not. False latching causes a passenger to become free from the seat belt instead of being properly restrained. A seat belt is considered to be falsely latching if it pulls free at less than 5 lbs. of pull. False latching can cause passenger ejection from the moving vehicle or serious injury when the passenger collides with the interior of the vehicle. Many manufacturers are aware of information in evidence but refuse to make it public regarding seatbelt buckles and unsafe seat belts and have entered into substantial but confidential resolutions of these matters with law firms representing injured passengers caused by the hidden danger or defect.
Seatbelt litigation, as well as defective vehicle, requires expertise and years of experience in automobile crash-worthiness claims. Seatbelt injuries account for more than 1/3 of auto-related fatalities. Additionally, serious injuries may occur when airbags either deploy late, deploy inadvertently or do not deploy at all, meaning that passengers who may have otherwise been unharmed during an accident find themselves victims of serious injuries. Legal cases surrounding airbag injuries, seat belt injuries, and tire-related injuries are extraordinarily difficult to prosecute and require an extensive amount of experience and expense because it often takes multiple experts to determine what the proximate cause of the accident was and how the scientific relationship between the accident and the defect and manufacturing process is related to the injury and/or death. That is why it is crucial to hire a competent and experienced Pennsylvania vehicle accident attorney who specializes in product liability cases to represent your interest.
If you or a loved one was seriously injured due to a defective airbag, a defective seatbelt, a defective tire design, or a defectively designed automobile, you should contact the experienced Pennsylvania personal injury lawyers at the law firm of Reiff and Bily, www.reiffandbily.com.
