Proving Your Car Accident Was Caused by Defective Car Part Design or Manufacturing

Many car crashes are preventable, but some are out of the control of the drivers involved. This is the case when a defective vehicle or part design or manufacturing process is at fault. The accidents caused for these reasons are no less serious than others and can lead to severe injuries and even death. These types of accidents can result in product liability lawsuits that hold one or more parties responsible, other than the drivers themselves.

However, proving liability in a car crash resulting from a defective car part is not the easiest task. Success requires working with an experience car accident and product liability attorney who understands how these cases work and how to overcome the challenges involved, including the high-powered attorneys that work on the side of the designers and manufacturers.

Types of vehicle defects

Before you can prove a case of vehicle part defect in its design or manufacturing, you must know the type of defect involved. Before vehicles are delivered to dealerships or sold to the public, they pass through different teams, ranging from engineers, builders, testers, etc. to ensure a vehicle’s performance and safety. However, even with all of this, defects can slip through. Sometimes they are not caught until many of these vehicles have been sold and driven by the public. Certain defects are eventually identified by the manufacturer or federal agency, resulting in a recall notice.

These defects can include:

• Defective tires
• Ignition switch defects
• Defective airbags
• Defective seat belts
• Steering system issues
• Roof collapse
• Fuel system problems
• Crash and impact issues

Victims of car crashes due to these defects can sustain serious and catastrophic injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and serious bone fractures. This is especially true when seat belts, air bags, and vehicle roofs proof to be defective.

Defective car product liability claims

Defective car claims may be pursued in one or more ways, including design defects, manufacturing defects, and labeling and warning defects.

• Design defect. These defects occur in the designs process before vehicle or part is ever manufactured. If the defect is entirely the cause of the design, then the manufacturer cannot bear liability for how the part was made.
• Manufacturing defect. These defects occur when the assembly of the products is flawed. These flaws take place often during rushed production or quality control because of an accelerated schedule. Testing may be rushed also which fails to detect these flaws. In this process, often only a certain number or batch of vehicles passing through the system will have the same manufacturing flaw. On the other hand, a design defect will affect every vehicle produced with that design.
• Labeling errors and failure to warn. If manufacturers fail to provide consumers with proper and clear instructions about the use of any vehicle component, especially those which could bring about a dangerous situation, then the manufacturer may have fallen short of meeting proper federal labeling requirements. To prove this type of defect, you must demonstrate that the warning label or the instructions on the label were missing.

If you have incurred an injury in a car crash in the Oklahoma City area due to a design, manufacturing, or warning label defect, our team at Cunningham & Mears can help. We will fight to help you recover your deserved compensation. Give us a call today at 405.232.1212 or use our contact form to send us a message.