Defective Car Seats
Safety restraints can save lives. If you’re involved in a crash, your seat belt will prevent you from being thrown out of the vehicle, avoiding serious harm. For young children, safety seats and booster seats are available to protect infants and toddlers in the event of a crash. Sadly, these safety products don’t always function as intended.
Skilled Salt Lake City and Provo, UT product liability attorney Lynn C. Harris would like to consider legal options when it comes to flawed and defective child safety seats. Let’s start by exploring the sobering statistics on young children in auto collisions.
Statistics on Auto Accidents and Young Children
According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 675 children age 12 and younger died in motor vehicle collisions in 2017. Breaking this data down further, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute found that 244 of these deaths involved children in child safety seats or booster seats.
Child safety seats can save lives, but if the accident is serious and/or the safety seat is not safe, it could lead to severe bodily harm and even death.
How Car Safety Seats Are Supposed to Work
In the best case scenario, child safety seats are supposed to keep children properly restrained. They are strapped in securely and will be less likely to be thrown out of the vehicle or seriously thrown about within the vehicle. The casing is durable, which will protect the child in the event of a crash. Booster seats, similarly, allow a young child to sit higher in a seat so they can use the normal car or truck seat belt.
Unfortunately, child safety seats don’t always work as intended.
Child Safety Seat Defects
There are many different kinds of defects that could lead to serious injuries. They could be design defects, meaning that the seat is inherently dangerous, or they could be manufacturing defects, meaning that the seat is dangerous because of manufacturing problems.
A few examples of child safety seat defects include:
- The child seat disconnects from its base
- The straps and clasps do not function properly
- The padding of the safety seat is not adequate to prevent injury
- The outer shell of the child seat is poorly designed
- The outer shell materials shatter and leave sharp/jagged edges that can cut a child
- The child seat did not come with adequate instructions on proper use
Injuries Caused by Defective Safety Seats
Potential injuries caused by defective child safety seats include:
- Facial trauma
- Head injuries
- Concussions
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs)
- Lacerations
- Contusions
- Broken bones
- Harm to internal organs
Recovering from Injuries in an Auto Accident
It can take an injured child months to recover from severe harm in an auto accident. If the injuries sustained were serious, they could lead to long-term effects on mobility as well as a child’s cognitive abilities and development. A catastrophic injury sustained because of a defective child safety seat could change a child’s entire life.
Holding Negligent Seat Makers Accountable
It’s important that defective safety seat companies and/or distributors be held accountable for the harm caused by their products. We can help you seek compensatory and punitive damages to cover medical expenses, long-term rehabilitative care, and the pain and suffering caused by the incident.
Learn More About Defective Product Lawsuits
If your child was seriously hurt or killed because of a faulty child safety seat, contact a skilled product liability and injury lawyer. We are here to help you. You can reach our law office in Salt Lake City by calling (801) 521-3200 and in Provo by calling (801) 609-5776.
