Advocate May14 issue2_Advocate template 2007.qxd 4/21/2014 12:24 PM Page 12
Brian D. Chase
Was your client wearing a seatbelt? Well-known seatbelt defects that may prove the answer is yes! Your client is in an auto accident. At the conclusion of the accident he is found to be unbelted. During the course of the crash he was thrown about the interior of the vehicle and/or ejected from the vehicle and suffered serious injury. The investigating officer “opines” that your client wasn’t wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident and checks the box in the Traffic Collision Report indicating “lap and shoulder belt not used.” Your client swears he was wearing his seatbelt. Many attorneys under this set of “facts” either do not sign up the case or resolve the case for something far less than full value due to the perceived comparative-fault issue. After all, the investigating officer “opined” that your client wasn’t wearing a seatbelt after his “investigation” was completed and further noted in the Traffic Collision Report that the “lap and shoulder belt [was] not used.” The purpose of this article is to point out the three primary ways an otherwise properly functioning seatbelt buckle can “unlatch” during the course of an ordinary auto accident. I write about this here for two reasons. One, I don’t want anyone to miss the potential auto-defect case, especially if your client has catastrophic injuries and insufficient coverage from other
potential third parties responsible for the crash. Two, if there is a sufficient coverage from a responsible third party, but your client is accused of not wearing a seatbelt, and thus a drastic devaluation of the claim due to alleged comparative fault, you will be armed with some viable theories to rebut that comparative-fault claim.
The three-buckle unlatch defects
• Inadvertent unlatch/release This is a well-known buckle defect in the automotive industry. This is a scenario where your client is properly wearing a seatbelt, gets involved in a crash and during the course of the crash something strikes the top of the buckle (the red/orange push button used to unlatch/release the buckle) and the buckle pops open, i.e., inadvertently unlatches or releases. It is not uncommon for a person’s elbow in various crash modes to strike the top of the buckle and unlatch it. In a frontal or rear-end crash during the rebound phase, a person’s elbow can strike the release button of the buckle and unlatch it. Similarly, in a rollover crash a person’s elbow or hand can easily strike the top of the button on the buckle during the chaos of rolling over. In addition, objects flying around inside the vehicle during a crash can also strike the top of
Figure 1: Surrogate study demonstrating how easily an elbow can access the buckle and unlatch it. 12 — The Advocate Magazine
MAY 2014
the buckle and cause an inadvertent unlatching of the buckle. This isn’t some plaintiff ’s “expert driven theory.” It is a reality. The auto industry knows firsthand that in a crash a person’s elbow can strike the top of the seatbelt buckle and unlatch it. As a matter of fact, auto manufacturers’ very own crash testing has proven this precise mode of inadvertently unlatching a buckle. In Figure 2 are two frames from a crash test showing the passenger sidecrash test-dummy’s elbow inadvertently unlatching its seatbelt buckle. In the picture on the left the dummy is fully belted and restrained. In the picture on the right, moments later during the course of the test, the crash-test dummy has rebounded back and its elbow has inadvertently released/unlatched the buckle. You can see the shiny object in the picture on the right, which is the tongue of the seatbelt, fully unlatched. If this were a real-world crash involving your client, the “investigating officer” would have “opined” that your client was not wearing a seatbelt and checked the box in the traffic collision report “lap and shoulder belt not used.” Due to this situation being a real possibility, the auto industry actually performs testing and has test standards
Seatbelt continues