Defective Child Car Seats and Car Accidents

Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

When you strap your child into a car seat, you believe that the car seat is safe. If sold, the car seat should be safe, but even when supposedly safe, seats can fail in an accident, leading to significant injury to your child. If your child has suffered serious injury as a result of a defective car seat, you may be facing high medical bills as well as the possibility that your child will require a lifetime of care.

The lawyers at Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata, & Siegel, P.C. are experienced attorneys that have handled numerous car accident and product liability cases. We can help you understand your options and pursue legal action. Please call or email us today for a free consultation.

How Car Seats Can Be Defective

There are three main ways that consumer products, including car seats, can be defective. Defective products can:

• Be defective by design
• Be defective by manufacture
• Be defective in instructions

Rating of car seats by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) can reduce the likelihood that a car seat will be defective by design, but has little effect on the other two types of defects.

Defective Car Seats in a Car Accident

All types of defects in a car seat can increase the likelihood that your child will experience serious injury during a car accident. A restraint defective by design may fail, leading to a child being ejected from the seat or the vehicle, resulting in considerable injuries. A defective restraint or booster seat may improperly position a child so that restraining straps cause injury to the neck. A seat defective by design may also be very difficult to adjust so that if fits your child.

A restraint defective by manufacture may break under the force of an accident. This has been a problem with some carrier/base combination seats. Straps may also come loose, leading to a child being ejected.

Defective car seat instructions may be so hard to understand that you will believe your child is properly fastened in the seat when he or she is not. The child may be either too loose or too tight in a seat, leading either to a risk of ejection or suffocation.

Many times, car seats depend on the seatbelts of the car to keep them in place. If your car has defective seatbelts, they may lead to a child seat coming loose.

Finally, all car seats should be designed so that restraints are easily released and a child can be removed quickly after an accident, reducing a risk of burn injuries.

How We Can Help

If your child was injured or killed in a car accident partly due to a defective car seat, we can help you assemble a lawsuit encompassing all those whose negligence contributed to your loss. We can help you bring together not only past and present expenses, but also project future expenses related to your child's ongoing care. We can help you put intangibles into concrete terms so that those contributing to your child's injury can understand the hurt they have caused. Then we can use our combined experience in defective product and auto accident cases to improve your chances of receiving compensation.

If you would like to learn more, please schedule a free initial consultation with Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata, & Siegel, P.C., representing injured people and their families in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

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