Defective Seatbacks Can Lead to Serious Injuries and Deaths
When we consider defects in an automobile that could lead to serious injuries and deaths, we tend to focus on safety-related parts (airbags and seat belts) or control the vehicle (steering, tires, and brakes). These parts — for the simple reason that we do focus on them — also tend to be reviewed and improved on a more regular basis. Unfortunately, some other parts of automobiles can also lead to serious injuries and death, but without getting nearly as much attention. Which is one reason why defective seatbacks kill children.
How Do Defective Seatbacks Kill Children?
Automobiles that are struck from the rear at high speed often experience failure of the structures holding front seats rigid in place. The weight of the driver and any front-seat passengers are suddenly pushed back against the seats when the rest of the vehicle is propelled forward by the impact. This sudden and significant force breaks the seatback structures too often, causing the seatback to collapse backward.
Certainly, this can result in injuries to drivers and front-seat passengers who suddenly are forced backward into a completely reclined position. This position itself is dangerous because it makes the seat belt restraints holding the front seat occupants in place less effective, leading to the “submarining” effect of a reclined person sliding forward underneath the restraints. (The reason why front seat passengers are advised not to ride with their seats reclined.)
Unfortunately, the suddenly backward-collapsing front seat also has to go somewhere — at great speed and force backward into and onto the rear seats, where young children are usually seated. This is how defective seatbacks kill children.
The individual stories are as tragic as the statistics are shocking. One 16-month-old girl was killed when her parents’ minivan was struck from behind, causing her father’s driver’s seat to collapse backward upon her. The girl’s mother told CBS News, “(It) was all because of some stupid car that we thought was the safest thing we could get for our family. . . .” In another incident, the driver’s seat of a Ford Fit collapsed backward on a four-year-old boy (on his birthday), causing a traumatic brain injury with lifelong effects.
A Long-Standing Problem
For years, safety regulators like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had advised placing children in the back seat of automobiles, claiming it was the safest place to be. Unfortunately, that same agency has not updated safety standards for automobile seatbacks for a half-century.
Investigative news work by CBS News over recent years has highlighted both the dangers posed by defective seatbacks and the failure of regulators to update safety standards. Vehicle safety associations estimate that defective seatbacks kill children at the rate of at least 50 children per year — a child per week on average. Many more people are injured, including children who are seriously and permanently injured but survive, drivers and front-seat passengers whose seats suddenly collapse, and adult rear-seat passengers who are struck by front seats collapsing upon them.
Why Do Defective Seatbacks Still Kill Children?
In one of their news reports, CBS News noted that an auto company design engineer stated that seatbacks could be significantly strengthened by additional hardware that cost no more than a dollar. Unfortunately, there has been little pressure from lawmakers or NHTSA itself to compel automakers to develop and follow stronger seatback safety standards.
In an earlier blog, we discussed legislation introduced in Congress in 2020 that would have required NHTSA and automakers to develop and implement new standards within two years under what would have been called the “Modernizing Seatback Safety Act.” Unfortunately, that bill was not passed in the last session of Congress. Its primary sponsors, Senators Markey and Blumenthal, recently re-introduced the bill in Congress in April 2021. They have vowed to continue to keep it on Congress’s agenda until it is passed.
Hopefully, pressure from vehicle safety advocates and the public will result in the passage of this bill and other efforts to improve long-overdue safety standards for seatbacks. There is no reason why the lack of inexpensive hardware improvements should allow defective seatbacks to kill children.
View this video from CBS News about the dangers of defective seatbacks and efforts to improve safety standards:
Sacramento Products Liability Lawyer
Hello, I’m Ed Smith, and I’ve been a Sacramento auto defects lawyer for nearly four decades. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a defective automobile seatback or other auto defects, it is important to seek advice from an attorney with the experience and resources to deal with auto defect cases. To speak with one of our injury attorneys for free and friendly advice, please call us at (916) 921-6400 or (800) 404-5400. Or you can also reach us with our online contact form.
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Photo Attribution: Rhonda Jenkins from Pixabay
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