About Defective & Exploding Airbags
Millions of Americans are driving vehicles with dangerous and potentially deadly airbags. Are you one of them?
An airbag deployment is an electronic response to prevent potential impact with the steering wheel or car interior during a frontal collision, rollover or side impact wreck. It happens quicker than we can understand, within milliseconds, but it doesn’t always perform as designed.
A defective airbag may not deploy at all, or if it does, it may explode with excessive force. Airbags can also malfunction. In each of these situations, the driver and passengers of the vehicle face severe injuries, some of which can be potentially dangerous or fatal.
The electronic control unit in an airbag gathers data and assesses whether deploying one or more airbags is necessary during an impact. A signal is transmitted to the inflator in the dashboard, door, roof or steering wheel, initiating a rapid chemical reaction that inflates the airbag within milliseconds. An airbag might not deploy if the control unit senses the crash’s severity doesn’t warrant airbag activation.
For the millions of vehicles on American roadways with Takata airbag recalls, the root of the issue lies in the chemical utilized within the airbag to facilitate the inflation. Due to a manufacturing defect in the airbag design, if the chemical used to inflate the airbag absorbs moisture, then this chemical propellant can violently explode with many times more force than designed causing the frontal airbag housing module and metal casing to violently explode sending sharp metal fragments upon inflation, posing grave threats to the driver and passengers and even death.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident due to what you believe might be a faulty airbag, please contact our legal team immediately. We help people who have experienced severe and catastrophic airbag injuries or death. Airbag defect lawyer David P. Willis has held the title of Board-Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer since 1988. With more than four decades of experience, he has adeptly advocated for injured clients, consistently challenging product manufacturers and automobile makers on their behalf.
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Did a Defective Airbag Cause Your Injury? We Can Help.
When an airbag is defective, it will fail to fulfill its primary safety function and can cause severe harm or death to those it’s meant to protect. A malfunctioning airbag might explode, fail to deploy during a collision, deploy at the wrong time, or deploy with excessive force, exacerbating injuries instead of preventing or lessening them. Even during low-speed accidents, defective airbags can mistakenly deploy, inflicting harm on the driver when airbag protection should not be activated.
Airbag defects can be caused by various factors, including manufacturing errors, design flaws, electronic control unit malfunctions, ruptures in the airbag inflator, or issues with moisture in the airbag’s chemical propellant.
If you or someone you care about was in an accident and suffered injuries due to the airbag in the vehicle, you may have legal options. Contact us for a free consultation and to learn about your rights. Lead airbag injury lawyer, David P. Willis is a Board Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer since 1988 and has been representing injured clients against product makers and the automobile manufacturers for 40+ years.
About Takata Airbag Injuries & Lawsuits
In recent years, the automotive industry faced one of the most substantial airbag recalls to date—the Takata airbag recall, impacting almost 100 million vehicles. These defective airbags, manufactured by the Japanese automotive company Takata Corporation, found their way into vehicles from numerous leading car manufacturers… but their deployment proved to be anything but safe.
Takata airbags have inflators that use a chemical propellant (ammonium nitrate) to create the gas that inflates the airbag. Ammonium nitrate is sensitive to heat and humidity and degrades over time, making it unstable and more prone to detonation in even minor collisions or incidents that should not trigger airbag deployment.
As a result of this instability, Takata airbags can deploy with excessive force, leading to the rupture of the airbag inflator housing that sends metal fragments exploding into the occupant’s head, face and body at high speeds.
The pervasive use of Takata airbags across various car manufacturers means that millions of drivers are still unknowingly facing potential danger on the roads if their defective airbag explodes with excessive force. Are you one of those drivers? Did a Takata airbag cause your significant injuries? If you’re unsure, reach out to an airbag defect lawyer. We can help.
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– Emily D.After my husband suffered a traumatic brain injury from a fall off scaffolding on a movie set our family attorney recommended David Willis. We met him and instantly liked him. Soon he and another lawyer hired experts and filed a lawsuit against the movie producer and scaffolding company. The case was settled our of court. Mr. Willis was always there for us. In fact, we even asked him to our daughter’s quinceanera party for her 15th birthday and he and his wife came. We will forever be grateful to him.
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Airbag Defect Lawyer Answers Your FAQs
Can I still pursue an airbag injury case if I was at fault in the wreck?
Yes, you can still pursue an airbag injury case if the driver of the vehicle was at fault in causing the car wreck. While extreme circumstances may weigh heavily on the case, the legal right to file an airbag lawsuit may still exist. Call us and let’s look into the defective airbag case for you.
Is my car's airbag dangerous?
The best way to find out if you might have one of the recalled airbags or other items that need to be repaired is to visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration webpage for active recalls for your vehicle.
Go to: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls You will need the 17-character Vehicle Identification Number (VIN).
Will I have to go to court?
Whether you will have to go to court for your airbag injury case depends on various factors, including the specific circumstances of the accident, the parties involved, the extent of your injuries, the evidence available, and how the legal process unfolds.
Will this cost me anything?
No, there are no fees or expenses unless the case is settled for you. We never ask the client to pay any expenses or attorney’s fees during the case. When your case is resolved, then and only then do we get paid. If the case is not successful, then the client owes the airbag lawyers nothing.
Since Takata is bankrupt, can I still file a claim against them?
Despite Takata’s bankruptcy filing in 2017, often we can still help injured clients seeking compensation for injuries caused by their defective airbags against Takata. While Takata may have undergone a bankruptcy, there is a residual fund set up by the bankruptcy court that is dedicated to handling payments and claims for those suffering a Takata airbag injury.
Can I still sue Takata if I've already settled my auto wreck claim?
Yes, in many cases we can still help file an airbag injury lawsuit against the makers of the airbag, the vehicle manufacturer and even the local dealership or repair shops that serviced the vehicle. If you have not settled your case against the negligent party(s) that caused your injuries, please DO NOT SETTLE until you have had your case and facts studied in depth by an experienced product liability lawyer.
In many cases you can still file an airbag injury claim, however the insurance settlement with the driver or defendant may send the next legal action against the airbag maker into Federal Court, where it can be much more difficult to pursue your case. Additionally, the vehicle in which you were in with the bad airbag, must be preserved as evidence. When the insurance company settles your case, they often will sell the vehicle as salvage. If it gets destroyed it can severely damage your ability to bring an airbag injury case. We can help find, retrieve and store the vehicle as evidence for the airbag defect litigation.
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