Submitted by Aiken Jacobsen on
As we develop new technology to improve vehicle safety those improvements eventually become standard practice. Federal safety standards for cars are meant to ensure that the best technology available gets put into our cars to keep us safe.
One of the best examples of vehicle safety improvements can be found in seatbelts. There was a time when seatbelts were the exception in cars rather than the rule. Eventually laws were passed to require that automakers put them in all new cars. There was a phase in which lap-only seatbelts were popular. As we began to study car accident injuries, however, lap-only seatbelts were found to be dangerous. This led to mandatory installation of combination lap-and-shoulder seat belts.
The U.S. Supreme court has ruled in an important California lawsuit involving lap-only belts. The car company Mazda was sued by the parents of a little girl who was killed in a 2002 car accident involving a 1993 Mazda minivan. The girl was allegedly killed because she was wearing a lap-only seatbelt.
When the minivan was built in 1993, Federal safety standards for seatbelts required that the vehicle be equipped with either lap-only belts or lap-and-shoulder belts. The parents of the victim claimed that Mazda showed negligence by choosing the lap-only belt over the lap-and-shoulder belt which is more effective. Mazda argued that it complied with federal safety standards which pre-empt any state-court personal injury lawsuits.
Mazda was able to block the original California lawsuit, and that decision was upheld on appeal by the California Supreme Court. However, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously that the case could proceed.
Justice Breyer noted that Mazda was given two seatbelt choices by federal safety standards, but they should have known that their choice could result in tort (personal injury) lawsuits if they chose to install the lap-only belts. The goal of the federal regulations was to achieve passenger safety, and tort lawsuits do not stand in the way of achieving that goal.
The Supreme Court's ruling is an important one for California. The ruling will serve as an important precedent in other similar California lawsuits regarding lap-only seatbelts. It will also hopefully be a wake-up call to automakers: there should be no compromise on installing the best safety equipment available. Lives depend on it.
Source: Reuters Westlaw News, "Supreme Court allows state lawsuits over seatbelts,"James Vicini and Jeff Roberts, 23 February 2011
