Most people assume that a serious injury or fatality in a car crash is the unavoidable consequence of the impact itself. In a meaningful percentage of cases, that assumption is wrong. The discipline of crashworthiness law exists because vehicle manufacturers can, and often do, design and build vehicles that turn survivable collisions into catastrophic ones. When a roof collapses on a rollover, when a seatback breaks rearward, when a fuel system ruptures and ignites, when a tire delaminates at highway speed, when a seatbelt unlatches mid-rollover, the manufacturer—not the at-fault driver—has caused or worsened the injury. The legal system recognizes that distinction; juries do too.
Cronauer Law represents catastrophically injured individuals and surviving family members in crashworthiness and auto product liability cases nationwide. We are members of the Attorneys Information Exchange Group (AIEG), the national plaintiffs’ bar collaborative through which leading product-defect trial lawyers share documents, depositions, expert work product, and litigation strategy across thousands of crashworthiness cases. AIEG membership is a working credential, not a bumper-sticker affiliation; it gives our clients access to four decades of internal manufacturer documents, deposition libraries, and proprietary testing the defense bar has spent generations trying to bury.
If you or a loved one suffered serious injury or death in a motor vehicle crash, and the injury seems out of proportion to the impact, you may have a crashworthiness case. The pages on this site are written to help you understand each major defect theory; this overview explains how the field works and why the right firm matters.
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Crashworthiness is the body of products liability law that holds vehicle manufacturers responsible not for causing the underlying crash but for failing to design and build a vehicle that adequately protects its occupants once a crash has begun. The doctrine is sometimes called the “second collision” or “enhanced injury” doctrine. Its modern foundation is Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F.2d 495 (8th Cir. 1968), in which the Eighth Circuit rejected the auto industry’s long-standing argument that manufacturers had no duty to design for collision and held that, because crashes are statistically foreseeable, manufacturers must take reasonable steps to minimize injurious effects.
After Larsen, every state in the country adopted some version of the crashworthiness doctrine, either by case law or by statute. The doctrine is now restated, with widespread acceptance, in Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 16 (1998), which makes a manufacturer liable for the increased harm that flows from a defect in the product, even where another cause initiated the harm.
What this means practically: even if the underlying collision was caused entirely by another driver, by weather, by a tire blowout, or by your own loved one’s negligence, the manufacturer may still be on the hook for the injuries the vehicle should have prevented. The defective seatbelt, the weak roof, the unstable SUV, the burning fuel system—each can be the legal cause of catastrophic harm regardless of who caused the initial crash.
In a properly tried crashworthiness case, the jury is taught to think in terms of two distinct collisions. The first collision is the vehicle’s contact with another vehicle, with a tree, with the ground in a rollover, or with itself in a rotational event. The first collision is what changes the vehicle’s velocity. The second collision is the impact of the occupant’s body with structures inside or around the vehicle—the steering wheel, the dashboard, the windshield pillar, the roof, the door frame, or the ground after ejection. Crashworthiness law focuses almost entirely on the second collision.
A vehicle that meets its occupant-protection duty manages the kinetic energy of the first collision and provides a survival space and restraint system that prevents the occupant from suffering catastrophic injury during the second collision. A vehicle that fails this duty—because the roof crushes, the seatback collapses, the belt unlatches, the fuel system ruptures—is defectively crashworthy. Our job is to make that engineering failure visible to a jury that has been told all its life that crashes simply happen and people simply die.
These are not ordinary motor vehicle cases. They demand specialized accident reconstruction, biomechanical engineering, automotive design experts, fire-cause-and-origin analysts, tire forensic engineers, and human-factors specialists. Discovery alone routinely costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes more, before trial. Manufacturers maintain dedicated defense teams whose only job is to litigate these cases relentlessly across the country. They use procedural strategies—the Morris Inquiry, federal preemption under Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U.S. 861 (2000), and aggressive protective-order practice—to slow plaintiffs down and exhaust their resources.
What allows plaintiffs to compete is collaboration through AIEG and similar national networks. When we take a case alleging, for example, an inadvertent seatbelt unlatching in a Ford rollover, we are not starting from scratch. We have access to thousands of pages of internal Ford documents from prior cases, deposition transcripts from the Ford engineers most likely to testify, prior verdicts and settlements, and the testing protocols our experts have already validated in court. That collective archive is what closes the resource gap and lets a single law firm credibly take on a Detroit defendant.
Although every case is different, almost all crashworthiness claims fall into one of a recognized handful of defect families. Each has its own physics, regulatory framework, expert disciplines, and litigation history. The pages linked at the bottom of this article walk through each one in detail.
The single most consequential decision a crash victim or family makes is whether the wreckage is preserved. The industry rule is blunt: “no car, no case.” Once the vehicle is crushed, scrapped, or repaired, much of the engineering proof is gone forever. Tires must be preserved as well, including all companions, with chain-of-custody documentation. The same is true of child safety seats.
Cronauer Law’s intake process begins with immediate spoliation letters to tow yards, insurance carriers, repair shops, and law enforcement. We deploy investigators to scene and storage locations on a rapid timeline, in many cases within hours of being retained. We work with forensic photographers to document the vehicle, the occupant compartment, the restraint system, and the tires before evidence is lost. That work is funded by the firm; clients pay nothing during the investigation phase.
The elements vary modestly by jurisdiction, but in most states a crashworthiness plaintiff must prove (1) a defect in the vehicle existed at the time it left the manufacturer’s control, (2) a feasible alternative design or warning would have prevented or reduced the injury, (3) the defect was a producing or proximate cause of the enhanced injury beyond what would have occurred in a non-defective vehicle, and (4) damages. Some states use a consumer-expectations test, others a risk-utility test, and many a hybrid analysis. See, for example, Soule v. General Motors Corp., 8 Cal.4th 548 (1994); Branham v. Ford Motor Co., 390 S.C. 203, 701 S.E.2d 5 (2010).
The technical heart of every case is the alternative design proof. A defect theory that does not include a viable, demonstrable, real-world alternative will rarely survive summary judgment, much less trial. That is why AIEG membership and access to industry documents are so important: in many cases the alternative design was already known to the manufacturer, was in use in the manufacturer’s own foreign market vehicles, or appeared in earlier or later model years.
Crashworthiness injuries are, by definition, severe. The damages categories typically presented include past and future medical expenses, life-care plans, lost earnings and impaired earning capacity, past and future pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and—where the law permits—punitive damages. Where punitive damages are recoverable, the documentary evidence of corporate decision-making routinely available through AIEG can be devastating. Cronauer Law builds damages with the same intensity it builds liability, working with life-care planners, vocational economists, and treating physicians early so the claim is fully ready by the time the manufacturer is forced to value it.
A regular motor vehicle case targets the at-fault driver; a crashworthiness case targets the manufacturer of the vehicle, tire, child seat, or component for failing to protect occupants in a foreseeable crash. The two can overlap. Many of our cases include both a third-party tort claim against an at-fault driver and a separate product liability claim against the manufacturer.
Almost never, although the analysis varies by state. Crashworthiness liability focuses on the second collision—the injury enhancement—not on who caused the first collision. Many states apply comparative fault rules that may reduce damages but do not bar recovery; some bar recovery only if the plaintiff is 50 or 51 percent at fault. We evaluate that issue carefully at intake.
Most states’ product liability statutes of limitations run two or three years from the date of injury, and some states impose statutes of repose that bar suits filed beyond a fixed period after the vehicle was first sold. Because both clocks can run very fast, and because evidence preservation is time-sensitive, prospective clients should contact counsel immediately.
Cronauer Law represents crashworthiness clients on a contingent fee. Clients pay nothing up front and nothing during the investigation. Fees and expenses are recovered out of the recovery, only if and when there is one.
Yes. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are minimums, and in nearly every jurisdiction compliance with the FMVSS is not a complete defense to a state-law product liability claim. The Supreme Court has so held in Williamson v. Mazda Motor of America, Inc., 562 U.S. 323 (2011), and the Safety Act itself preserves common-law remedies. 49 U.S.C. § 30103(e).
AIEG—the Attorneys Information Exchange Group—is a national membership organization of plaintiffs’ lawyers who litigate auto, tire, and consumer-product defect cases. AIEG members share documents, depositions, expert work, and strategy under sharing protective orders. That collective intelligence is critical to leveling the playing field with multinational manufacturers.
Most crashworthiness lawsuits take eighteen months to three years from filing to resolution, and complex cases can take longer. Manufacturers do not pay these claims early; their model is to make plaintiffs spend money and prove their case piece by piece. Cronauer Law staffs and finances cases to outlast the defense.
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If you were injured in any way–medically, emotionally, physically, in a car, at work, on the street–then you may have a case. Employers, companies, and individuals have a “duty of care.” This term refers to each person’s obligation to avoid actions or situations that endanger other people.
Personal injury attorneys offer their services on what is called a “contingency fee” basis. That means we pay for all the upfront costs of your case–hiring specialists, paying court fees, even assessing medical care. You owe us nothing, and we only take a fee if you win your case.
As soon as possible, ideally. Give our personal injury law firm a call to speak with one of our staff members confidentially, even if it’s not normal business hours where you are. Also feel free to fill out our contact form with some basic information about you and your case. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Once we’ve investigated the basic details of your injuries and your case, we’ll be able to tell you how much compensation you’re entitled to. While we (and no ethical attorney) can make promises regarding your case, we can help calculate the costs and lost wages caused by your harm.
Cronauer law injury attorneys have tried virtually every type and size of plaintiff’s claim possible. We’ve handled cases on behalf of people injured in car crashes, Engineers injured in a slip and fall, and even businessmen who have been wronged by their partners. Our firm has made a name for itself in a variety of legal areas. Our results in complex areas like commercial litigation, trucking accidents, Criminal Defense, and Product Liability barely scratch the surface. Whatever the nature of your injury, we have the experience and resources to demand compensation on your behalf.
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