Defective Tire Lawsuits for Personal Injuries
The tires on our automobiles and trucks are crucial elements of vehicle safety, because they are literally “where the rubber meets the road” — the sole point of contact between our vehicles and the roadways upon which we operate them. They are important for the proper steering, braking, and stability of our cars. And when a tire fails suddenly, the consequences can be dire, with a loss of those abilities to steer, brake, and maintain control that keep us safe. A sudden blowout or separation of the tire tread can result in a high-speed collision with other moving vehicles, with guardrails, divider walls, or other parts of the roadway, or with stationary vehicles, trees, buildings, or other objects near the road. Since tire failures most often occur when tires are under maximum stress — at highway speeds – this can result in very serious injuries or death to the occupants of the vehicle whose tire has failed, those in other vehicles nearby, or even pedestrians unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. Defective tire lawsuits can be effective at recovering compensation for those who have sustained such losses.
Understanding When Defective Tire Lawsuits are Appropriate
It’s important to recognize early on in a personal injury claim or lawsuit when a problem with one of the involved vehicles may have caused the crash. Because defective tire lawsuits stem from incidents that were likely to have caused serious injuries or even death — since tire failures are very often from high-speed incidents — it is crucial to identify potential defendants who may have the insurance and financial resources adequate to fully compensate a serious injury or death claim. The bodily injury liability policies carried by most individual drivers can cover as little as $15,000 in coverage for injuries caused to a single person. Even the largest individual policies typically top out at $250,000 or $300,000 in coverage, which can be completely inadequate for a serious injury or death.
Defective tire lawsuits, however, are typically brought against the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of the defective product — large corporations that have much greater amounts of liability insurance coverage and financial resources sufficient to compensate even major injury cases.
Recognizing the Type of Tire Defect
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has estimated that about 11,000 vehicle crashes per year in the United States result from tire failures. NHTSA notes that the typical causes are:
- Tread separation
- Blowouts
- Bald tires
- Underinflated tires
We as vehicle drivers can protect against some of these failure modes. Periodically checking our tires for wear — such as with the “penny test” using a coin to check the remaining tread depth, or looking for treadwear indicators that will appear on many tires after a certain amount of use — can help guard against accidents caused by bald tires that lose their grip on the roadway. Checking and maintaining the air pressure in our tires can also help make certain that they maintain proper stability, steering, and braking ability on the roads.
Sudden tread separation or blowouts, however, can often result from tire defects that we have no way of knowing about from a simple visual inspection of our tires — they can often result from defects either in the design of the tires or in their manufacture.
Design Defects vs. Manufacturing Defects
Design defects trace their presence all the way back to the original development of a particular type or model of tire. Among the types of design defects that may be present are problems with either the cap plies or the belt wedge. The cap plies are layers — typically of nylon — put into the tire to help protect the “belt shoulder” where the flat part of the tire’s road surface curves to the sidewalls. A belt wedge, on the other hand, is a layer put between the tire’s steel belts to keep them from abrading each other in order to make the tires more durable. Unfortunately, this additional layer can also be a failure point for sudden separation of the multiple layers. All the other parts of a tire’s design — the type of rubber and its planned production and curing methods, for example — can also be subject to defects in design.
While a design defect typically is a problem for all the tires that are produced according to that particular design, what are referred to as “manufacturing defects” may only apply to a limited number of tires that were actually produced in a way that did not properly meet the original design criteria. Manufacturing defects can occur from a wide variety of different problems, from a bad batch of rubber or other raw materials to human error involving the people who were running the manufacturing processes on a particular day. Among these manufacturing defects are things like contaminants in the rubber compounds or errors in curing the rubber that left weaknesses or improper alignment of the steel belts and any other layers that may tend to result in tread separation.
Early and Thorough Investigation is Key in Defective Tire Lawsuits
An experienced personal injury attorney will recognize indicators in crash site evidence that may point to a tire defect being the potential cause of an auto accident. Obviously, a shredded or blown out tire may be a complete giveaway, but sometimes more subtle indicators of a loss of steering or braking ability may point to a tire problem. Early identification is key, not only to be able to quickly engage with tire manufacturers and retailers to make sure adequate amounts of coverage are available, but most importantly to know when actual physical evidence needs to be preserved. This would certainly include both the failed tire and the other tires in the same set (for examination and comparison), as well as physical evidence at the accident site that may only be present for a short amount of time — an abruptly-ending skid mark, for example, may disappear after one good rainstorm. It is crucial to preserve the entire vehicle and store it for the duration of litigation for further examination and testing.
Expert Witnesses for Defective Tire Lawsuits
A knowledgeable personal injury law firm will be able to recognize the possible need for several types of expert witnesses in tire defect litigation. This would likely include materials scientists or engineers who are familiar with the proper design and manufacture of tires. Also, an accident reconstruction expert would likely be needed to explain how the tire failure precipitated the crash and its destructive forces. A human factors expert may be needed to explain how and why a driver would typically react to a sudden tire failure. Determining which types of expert witnesses are needed is a key step in litigation and toward trial, and a skilled accident attorney will have both the knowledge of which experts to engage and the resources to retain their services – these cases can frequently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to properly prove up and present at trial.
View this video with valuable tips for how to handle a sudden tire blowout:
Personal Injury Accident Attorneys in Sacramento
My name is Ed Smith, and I’m a Sacramento Personal Injury Attorney. Automobile defect injury cases in general are much more complicated and expensive to handle than other car crash claims and lawsuits. Defective tire claims are more challenging since they often involve serious injuries or death. If you or a loved one has been hurt as the result of a tire failure – on your own vehicle or on another one that caused the accident – please call our office at (916) 921-6400 or (800) 404-5400 for free, friendly advice. You can also reach us through our online contact form.
I am proud to be a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel.
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Image Attribution: Image by haim charbit from Pixabay
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