California Injury Blog

Published on: April 3, 2007

Airbag Failure

By Brian Chase

When a consumer buys an airbag-equipped vehicle, they expect the airbags to deploy properly in the event of an accident. Thousands of lives have been saved by airbags; however there has been a shocking increase in the number of injuries and fatalities caused by various airbag systems. Over the years, there have been many technological advances, yet airbag failures continue to occur. In many cases, airbag malfunctions take place in low to moderate-speed accidents where the excess force of the deploying airbag is responsible for the injury and/or death. Other significant airbag malfunctions include failure to deploy and deployment at the wrong time.

Development of the airbag began in the early 1950’s. GM, Ford, and Eaton Corporation were among the pioneers of crash testing to evaluate the airbag. On April 1, 1989 the United States government required the installation of airbags in the production of all new automobiles.
The typical components of a modern airbag system include; crash sensors, a gas generator, an airbag, and a diagnostic module. Some airbag systems also consist of a switch that deactivates the passenger side airbag. Crash sensors are designed to detect a collision by measuring sufficient deceleration of a vehicle. Gas generators instantaneously produce a high volume of gas in order to fill up the airbag and provide a cushion for the moving occupant. The stored airbag becomes fully inflated by the gas in about 30-to-40 milliseconds. Diagnostic modules monitor and confirm the readiness of an airbag system’s components. They processes information and in the event of a moderate to severe crash, they will send a signal to the inflator inside the airbag to inflate.

The majority of the victims of airbag malfunctions consist of short-stature drivers and children. The injuries and deaths of these occupants are often not the result of a faulty airbag. They are mostly due to the manufacturers poor airbag design. Driver’s side airbags deploy forward at 120 to 200 miles per hour and passenger side airbags deploy forward at 90 to 210 miles per hour. Airbags in both positions can impact the occupant with a force as high as 2000 pounds (nhtsa.gov). These airbags are termed overly aggressive airbags. They are designed and tested only for 50th-percentile adult male, about 5’9″ tall and weighing about 167 pounds. The built in danger is the failure of manufacturers to design and test airbags for smaller persons and children, as oppose to only for an “average man.”

According to the NHTSA, between 1990 and 2001, 133 child deaths were caused by airbags in low-severity accidents in which no other significant injuries would likely have been resulted. Of the 133 deaths, 111 were children between the ages of 1 and 11, and 22 of them were infants. In many cases, passenger-side airbags deploy horizontally and directly toward the child. In this case, the airbag is aimed directly at the child’s head or the back of the child’s car seat causing severe and fatal injuries.
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Published on: April 2, 2007

Failure To Buckle Up Costs a Life in Corona

By Brian Chase

A 55-year-old Corona woman died last week after the car she was riding in tried to cut into the FasTrak lanes on the eastbound 91 Freeway during the evening rush hour on March 27, according to a news report posted on The Orange County Register’s Web site on Tuesday.

Officials confirmed the woman’s identity on Monday because her husband, who was on a fishing trip in Mexico, had to be located and informed, the article said.

Maria Maldonado, 55, of Corona was in the front seat of her daughter’s car when the car flipped over and crashed into a wall after losing control near Weir Canyon Road just after 5 p.m., coroner officials said. Maldonaldo was the only one not wearing her seat belt and the only person who died in the crash.Her daughter and another passenger were taken to Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim.

Both toll lanes and the northbound Costa Mesa (55) Freeway connector to the 91 were shut down for several hours that evening.

This is a tragic death that may have been avoided had the woman’s daughter not cut into the FasTrak lanes and had the woman been wearing a seat belt.
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Published on: April 2, 2007

DANGEROUS DOGS AND THEIR OWNERS-WHEN WILL IT STOP?

By Brian Chase

Alexandra Robinson Hinkle will tell you that she really loves living in Hayward, California. In fact, Alexandra said of her neighborhood, “It’s probably one of the best places to live in Hayward. There’s constantly families walking and people jogging.” And, that is exactly what Alexandra loved to do; take scenic walks with her dog, Tag, along Skyline Drive. That is, until last week when she and Tag were attacked by two neighborhood dogs that were running loose. And, these were not just any two dogs, but a Pit Bull and a Rottweiler. Alexandra suffered injuries to her hand, and cuts and bruises from being dragged by the Rottweiler, who was fittingly named Cujo. Her dog, Tag, suffered puncture wounds to his ear and his testicles. Only the intervention of a diligent neighbor, not the owner of the dogs, saved Alexandra and Tag from further injuries. Even more disturbing, Alexandra learned that several neighbors had complained to police and local officials about these same two dogs running loose. The dog’s owner, Matthew Marino, was due to testify at a closed hearing to determine what will become of the dogs. Alexandra wants a promise the dogs will not return to her neighborhood. For now, Alexandra lives in fear, saying, “It’s a shame they’re willing to let it [her neighborhood] become a place of terror and fear.”

Unfortunately, certain breeds of dogs have a bad reputation for being more dangerous, and even the average person knows that. In fact, certain dog breeds are known to be more dangerous, and those dogs are purchased by the military, police, etc. for their natural, inborn attack propensities.

Insurance companies have become aware of the risks of insuring homeowners who own certain breeds of dogs, and they have researched these risks; some of them even refusing coverage to homeowners who own dogs such as Pit Bulls and Rottweilers. These types of dog breeds are known to have more aggressive issues that make them dangerous not only to adults and other dogs, but especially to children.

This is all the more problematic, because Hayward is described ‘the heart of the bay’, the bay being San Francisco Bay. The dog owners should have taken heed after a recent high profile case; a few years ago in San Franciso 33 year old Diane Whipple was attacked and killed by two dogs an the owners of those dogs were originally charged with murder.
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Published on: March 30, 2007

Class Action Lawsuits Pile up Against Menu Foods

By Brian Chase

Legal woes continued to mount yesterday for pet food manufacturer Menu Foods as the Canada-based company at the center of one of the largest consumer-product recalls ever in North America found itself facing at least six class-action lawsuits from angry dog and cat owners, according to a news report in The Edmonton Sun, a Canadian newspaper.

Two Los Angeles residents who allege their cats got sick from eating tainted food made by the company, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking class-action status and unspecified damages. This filing brings the number of class action lawsuits to at least six across Canada and the U.S. Class-action status needs to be granted by a judge. Having a lawsuit certified as a “class-action” is not easy or automatic.

So far, Menu Foods has recalled 95 brands of the company’s dog and cat food – 60 million cans and pouches in all. The food is said to have contained traces of aminopterin, a rat poison banned in the United States. Tests continued to confirm the source of the contamination, but wheat gluten imported from China is considered a prime suspect.
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Published on: March 28, 2007

Company Sues Feds for Safety Data Hidden from Public

By Brian Chase

A safety research company has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal District Court in Washington, seeking publicly-owned data about deaths and injuries that is being concealed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), according to a report by consumer watchdog group, posted on www.consumeraffairs.com.

R.A. Whitfield, Director of Quality Control Systems Corp., said that the public needs access to the Early Warning Reports collected under the Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act to better understand why so many deaths and injuries related to tire failures in the Ford Explorer have continued long after the well-known and well-publicized tire recalls that affected the vehicle.

The article says taxpayer money was used to gather this data, which is ironically being withheld from the public that paid for it. The TREAD Act was passed in October 2000 in response to Ford Explorer-Firestone tire-related rollover deaths in the U.S. and Ford’s overseas recalls. As the article goes on to explain, TREAD amended federal transportation law to require vehicle and equipment manufacturers to report safety recalls or campaigns on vehicles and components in a foreign country if they also sold substantially similar products here in the United States.

The law also required NHTSA to create regulations governing quarterly Early Warning Reports — information on property damage and warranty claims, consumer, dealer and field reports, production numbers and deaths and injuries collected by manufacturers — with the intent of using the data to spot defect trends.

The suit alleges that after all these years the public has consistently been denied access to this information. The article points out that between July 1994 and January 15, 2007, at least 420 persons have been killed in tire-related, Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer, and Mazda Navajo crashes, including 396 deaths found in NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and 24 recent deaths found in news accounts. For more than a year, Whitfield has been seeking Ford’s EWR death and injury data on Explorers to better analyze the rise in tire-related Explorer fatalities.
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Published on: March 22, 2007

Orange County Car Accident Takes Another Teen Life Because of Alcohol and Speed

By Brian Chase

A single-vehicle auto accident in Orange County, involving the combination of alcohol and speeding have taken the life of an 18-year-old Buena park man this morning, the Orange Country Register reported.

Authorities stated that Philip Na was driving a Toyota Camry early Wednesday morning when it careened off the road and hit a light pole, killing Na and injuring his passenger, according to the article.

Na’s 17-year-old passenger was taken to La Palma Intercommunity Hospital with minor injuries. His identity was not disclosed because of his age. He was treated at the hospital and eventually released to his parents, officials said.

Preliminary reports indicate that a combination of alcohol and speeding contributed to the auto accident. An investigation into the cause of the accident is continuing.
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Published on: March 20, 2007

Ford Excursion RollOver Accident Kills California Man

By Brian Chase

According to a story by NBC News 4, a California man died Sunday in a single-vehicle rollover accident on U.S. 6 just east of Ely, Nevada. Jay Wooten of Fairfield, California, driving his Ford Excursion, swerved to avoid hitting an elk. The Ford Excursion crossed both traffic lanes and rolled over, killing Wooten, according to Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper George Edwards. Thank God that Mr. Wooten’s five passengers, including four children, survived although they were injured and hospitalized.

What caught my eye about this story is that at Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys we are in the middle of rollover testing of Ford Excursions. Their instability and propensity to roll due to their configuration, handling characteristics and weight distribution is not as surprising as the inability of the vehicle to protect its passengers from injury when it does roll over. One of the astounding things we have documented from our testing is the lack of roof strength.

When turned upside down and dropped from less than a foot the roof pancakes down, leaving no survival space for passengers. Can you image how much more violently the vehicle’s roof hits the ground in a rollover accident? The news article did not mention if Mr. Wooten’s fatal injuries were caused by “roof crush”. However, based upon our test results, I would not be surprised if the Excursion roof crushed in on Mr. Wooten, leaving him no survival space.

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Published on: March 19, 2007

Clergy Abuse Victims’ Advocates Question Southern Baptists

By Brian Chase

The clergy abuse victims’ advocates who dogged the Roman Catholic Church over sexual abuse by its clergy have now turned their attention to the Southern Baptists, accusing America’s largest Protestant denomination of also failing to root out molesters, according to an in-depth article posted on CNN.

The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (www.snapnetwork.org) has started a campaign to call attention to alleged sex abuse committed by Southern Baptist ministers and concealed by churches. The group has presented a letter to Southern Baptist Convention executive committee members in Nashville, asking the group to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on clergy sexual abuse and to create an independent review board to investigate molestation reports. It sounds all too familiar doesn’t it?

Consider this. In the past six months SNAP has received reports of about 40 cases of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist ministers with some of the incidents dating back many years.

Church leaders concede there have been some incidents of clergy abuse in Southern Baptist congregations, but say their hands are tied when it comes to investigating complaints across the denomination.

“They don’t want to see this problem,” said Christa Brown, a SNAP member from Austin, Texas, who says she was sexually abused as a child by a Southern Baptist minister. “That’s tragic because they’re imitating the same mistakes made by Catholic bishops.”
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Published on: March 19, 2007

Dog Bite Injury Causes Boy To Lose Lip

By Brian Chase

In a dog bite attack, a 9-year-old boy’s top lip was ripped off when his pet dog, a pit-bull terrier, tried to snatch a cookie out of his mouth, according to BBC News report last week.

The family raised the dog, Simba, from the time he was a puppy, and although this is the first dog bite incident they have experienced, the family has since euthanized Simba and given away another pit-bull terrier they owned. Pit-bull breeds are listed by the CDC as being a dangerous breed.

John Henderson, the dog bite victim, reportedly needed a skin graft to try and repair as much of the damage as possible, at least at this point in time. John must now wait six weeks before the extent of the damage is known.

According to the news report, the dog bit the boy’s lip and would not release. The boy’s mother said she would never have another dog after this traumatic incident.

“It was horrible – our worst nightmare,” she said.
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Published on: March 17, 2007

Jet Ski Accident Seriously Injures Teenager

By Brian Chase

A jet ski accident sent a 14-year-old to Broward General Hospital Friday afternoon after a crash at a lake at Markham Park in Broward County, Florida, an NBC news affiliate reported.

Officials said Tyler Goldberg apparently drove his jet ski into a wooden dock at a high rate of speed. Video footage captured by an NBC news helicopter showed a jet ski floating near a dock at the boat-loading area of the lake. It appeared that the jet ski handlebars had been knocked off.

The teenager was heading for the dock, but couldn’t turn the handlebar, officials said. He then lost control of the watercraft and plowed right into the dock. The exact cause of the jet ski accident is yet to be determined.

Goldberg’s family was on shore and saw him hit the dock, the article said. A police official said that Goldberg could have turned off the power when he saw the dock approaching. That could have caused him to lose steering control because a personal watercraft needs that power to move.

Officials at the scene said Goldberg suffered chest, head and neck injuries. He is listed in critical condition, according to NBC reports.
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