Roof Crush and Rollover Accidents – Must The Two Go Together?
In Illinois, personal injury lawyers often represent victims of rollover crashes. Injuries from rollover accidents are often deadly, and when passengers do survive, they are almost always left with severe head, neck and spinal injuries. Public Citizen, a national non-profit public interest organization, explains some of the details on its site.
When a vehicle’s roof crushes in a rollover, the survival space for occupants is greatly reduced or eliminated altogether – which means the heads and spines of occupants come in contact the roof. In addition, roof crush often shatters windows and windshields, leading to ejection of occupants, which is frequently fatal. Experts estimate that as many as one-half of seriously injured ejected occupants could have received their initial injuries as a consequence of roof crush.
Public Citizen further reports the auto industry has tried to obscure the engineering principles which would have emphasized maintaining survival space by arguing in court and to NHTSA that occupants somehow “dive” into the roof. This ignores the obvious truth that if seats and safety belts held passengers in place during a roll, and if the roof was strong enough to withstand the weight of the car, the head and spine of occupants would be substantially safer. In addition, safety engineers have shown through accident investigations that injuries among occupants directly correlate with the location of roof intrusion in the vehicle. In other words, where there is roof crush, occupants are injured, and where someone is uninjured, there is little-or-no roof crush.
Manufacturers must improve the design of their roofs to withstand the weight of the vehicle in case of a rollover. It is that simple.
Chicago personal injury attorneys and consumer safety groups such as Public Citizen support the creation of a dynamic rollover standard, supported by mandatory crashworthiness protections, in addition to providing consumers with effective, readily available vehicle-specific information at the point-of-sale.
If you or someone you know were injured in an auto accident involving roof crush or passenger ejection, contact a Chicago personal injury attorney immediately. You will need an expert in the field of auto products liability, and engineering principles related to rollover accidents.
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