Recently there have been more cases of airbag failure specifically relating to the sensors that control them. Sensors have often been cited as the cause of airbags deploying in light collisions, when they’re not supposed to, inflating suddenly and causing injury to a driver who may have lightly bumped a wall or another vehicle while attempting to park. In other cases, and more commonly connected with personal injury lawsuits, injuries tied to airbags are associated with instances when airbags should have deployed to protect the occupants in a collision, but did not.
Virginia Accident and Lawsuit
An airbag’s failure to deploy was at the center of a lawsuit brought against Hyundai by the Duncan family of Radford, Virginia. A single-vehicle accident left 16-year-old Zachary Gage Duncan with head injuries that a properly deployed airbag may have prevented.
According to a local newspaper, The Roanoke Times, Duncan had been driving in a 2008 Hyundai Tiburon in February 2010. Duncan suddenly lost control and his car left the road, slid down an embankment and stopped abruptly when it collided with a tree. Duncan’s sole passenger was not injured, but he sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when he hit the side of his skull on the roof rail after the car’s standard equipped side-impact airbag failed to deploy.
According to their lawsuit, the Duncans argued that the proper deployment of the side airbag could have prevented their son from striking his head against the car’s roof rail. The impact caused a severe traumatic brain injury, leaving the driver in a coma for nearly a week after the accident.
Originally, court proceedings ended in a hung jury The Duncans tried the case a second time. During the second trial, the jury heard plaintiff arguments that sensors in the 2003 to 2008 Tiburon models were located under the driver’s seat and situated in the wrong place for effective deployment of the side airbag.
Hyundai refuted the argument by stating the car was manufactured at a time when side airbags were not regulated by the industry, but had been included by Hyundai anyway as an added feature. Side airbags are designed to protect a driver from impacts to the side of the car. It was not clear in the report whether the 2008 Hyundai Tiburon was outfitted with side-curtain airbags.
Medical Costs and a Verdict
The plaintiffs, according to court records, have accumulated in excess of $139,000 in medical bills related to their son’s care. As a result of his brain injury, Zachary Duncan required significant rehabilitation so he could re-learn to walk and talk. While he did graduate from high school with the aid of a modified program, he still copes with cognitive deficiencies that make him forgetful or able to recall recent events. Duncan also has difficulty controlling his emotional responses and may eventually require placement in a long-term care facility when his parents are no longer able to provide him with care.
That cost, over Zachary’s lifetime, was projected to be $11 million. The Jury of three women and four men ruled that Hyundai had manufactured a vehicle perceived to be “unreasonably dangerous.” The Duncans were awarded $14 million, plus $140,000 for medical expenses already incurred.
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