How many baby boomers were in seat belts – let alone “car seats” when we were growing up? How many drivers take their vehicles to these free “Child Seat Safety Inspections” and find that what they thought was “properly installed” wasn’t even close… So sad that children have suffered but there is some responsibility to the drivers of these vehicles – the mother was driving – she overcorrected and rolled her van – is there no percentage of liability on her part? I say these manufacturers just stop producing “safety” products and let the world go back to being responsible for their own actions – But wait… then there would be no one to sue for TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars…
I have to go now and take a bath while using my hairdryer in the tub…
No safety product warrants 100% protection from bodily injury, particularly in violent rollover at high speeds. (cause of which was the mothers negligence) Child seats afford “good” protection for 98% of common accidents. When exteme physics come into play all bets are off. We’re not talking about the “cage” of an Indy car where the risk of violent crashes is very high. Some things simply can’t be prevented and this sounds like one of them. Hopefully a jury will not reward this family and take into consideration the proximate casue of the incident………the mother’s own negligence. However, based on the precedent cases against EvenFlo sympathy will reign again in this case.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Nothing is infallible, nor does EvenFlo make claims that, in the event of an accident, no injury will occur when their product is used properly. If we can sue companies when we decide their product does not work properly, I think they (the companies) should be able to sue when their product DOES work properly! Imagine all the money this will generate… which will, in the end, be used to fight senseless lawsuits.
I agree. I am the first person to say that people need to start taking responsibility for their own actions but we can all agree that often times IJ does not give us the FULL story. They do not say what the allegations were, just simply a defective child seat. We cannot judge the mother from the information given in this article.
We do need more information. But just from what we do know we can tell that Evenflow should not be held liable. A roll-over accident is not what a child seat is designed to protect from. Child seats are designed to protect in head-on and rear-end collisions. They do not offer optimum protection in side-impact collisions and can definitely not be counted on in roll-overs. It doesn’t matter if the mother thought the seat was installed properly, the seat isn’t designed to keep the child restrained in the same manner as the space shuttle restraint devices.
ES….with all due respect, we can judge the mother. Her careless/negligent operation of the vehicle is the proximate cause of the accident and the death of the child. Everytime something tragic happens, the finger-pointing starts to deflect attention away from the real issue. I pulled the local news coverage on this crash and here’s a few more facts. The mother “lost control” at high speed. She lacked sufficient skill/knowledge to recover and “over-corrected” causing the van to rollover. The doors flew open and child was ejected, not the seat. Did the mother bother to fasten the safety straps around the child? Did the child simply “slip” under the straps? Considering the violent physics, it’s doubtul anything would have protected the child. As others have pointed out, car seats aren’t a panacea for evey type of accident. They’re better than nothing, but safe driving trumps them everytime.
Agreed Deanne, sounds like the mother is completely liable for what happened including the death of her child. She obviously does not know how to drive and most likely did not properly restrain the child in the seat. Not that it would have mattered in a rollover. Too bad the jury will vote on smypathy instead of the facts.
whenever I hear about these type of claims, and several medical malpractice and pharmaceutical liab. claims, I wander whether the Claimant would have preferred not having a child safety seat, or forego the life-saving surgery, or suffer from the ailment that the drug was intended for, but had unforunate side effects that even the FDA did not foresee (after 7 years of research). I believe that the critical questions that a jury should ask are: Whether the accident and resulting injury was foreseeable by “expert designers; and whether the mfr. can reasonably prevent that injury w/o extraordinary costs. I suspect that the mother would have sued if the straps held the kid in, but caused some laceration, bruising or internal trauma to the kid. Heck, she might have sued the mfr. if she was rendered unconscious, and the infant became injured, when he couldn’t free himself from a burning car, or a car that went under water, etc…
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How many baby boomers were in seat belts – let alone “car seats” when we were growing up? How many drivers take their vehicles to these free “Child Seat Safety Inspections” and find that what they thought was “properly installed” wasn’t even close… So sad that children have suffered but there is some responsibility to the drivers of these vehicles – the mother was driving – she overcorrected and rolled her van – is there no percentage of liability on her part? I say these manufacturers just stop producing “safety” products and let the world go back to being responsible for their own actions – But wait… then there would be no one to sue for TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars…
I have to go now and take a bath while using my hairdryer in the tub…
No safety product warrants 100% protection from bodily injury, particularly in violent rollover at high speeds. (cause of which was the mothers negligence) Child seats afford “good” protection for 98% of common accidents. When exteme physics come into play all bets are off. We’re not talking about the “cage” of an Indy car where the risk of violent crashes is very high. Some things simply can’t be prevented and this sounds like one of them. Hopefully a jury will not reward this family and take into consideration the proximate casue of the incident………the mother’s own negligence. However, based on the precedent cases against EvenFlo sympathy will reign again in this case.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Nothing is infallible, nor does EvenFlo make claims that, in the event of an accident, no injury will occur when their product is used properly. If we can sue companies when we decide their product does not work properly, I think they (the companies) should be able to sue when their product DOES work properly! Imagine all the money this will generate… which will, in the end, be used to fight senseless lawsuits.
I like your thinking. This sounds like another case of negligent parent trying to shift blame by suing someone else.
How about some facts like: why was the seat defective?
Was the child ejected from the seat?
I agree. I am the first person to say that people need to start taking responsibility for their own actions but we can all agree that often times IJ does not give us the FULL story. They do not say what the allegations were, just simply a defective child seat. We cannot judge the mother from the information given in this article.
We do need more information. But just from what we do know we can tell that Evenflow should not be held liable. A roll-over accident is not what a child seat is designed to protect from. Child seats are designed to protect in head-on and rear-end collisions. They do not offer optimum protection in side-impact collisions and can definitely not be counted on in roll-overs. It doesn’t matter if the mother thought the seat was installed properly, the seat isn’t designed to keep the child restrained in the same manner as the space shuttle restraint devices.
ES….with all due respect, we can judge the mother. Her careless/negligent operation of the vehicle is the proximate cause of the accident and the death of the child. Everytime something tragic happens, the finger-pointing starts to deflect attention away from the real issue. I pulled the local news coverage on this crash and here’s a few more facts. The mother “lost control” at high speed. She lacked sufficient skill/knowledge to recover and “over-corrected” causing the van to rollover. The doors flew open and child was ejected, not the seat. Did the mother bother to fasten the safety straps around the child? Did the child simply “slip” under the straps? Considering the violent physics, it’s doubtul anything would have protected the child. As others have pointed out, car seats aren’t a panacea for evey type of accident. They’re better than nothing, but safe driving trumps them everytime.
Agreed Deanne, sounds like the mother is completely liable for what happened including the death of her child. She obviously does not know how to drive and most likely did not properly restrain the child in the seat. Not that it would have mattered in a rollover. Too bad the jury will vote on smypathy instead of the facts.
whenever I hear about these type of claims, and several medical malpractice and pharmaceutical liab. claims, I wander whether the Claimant would have preferred not having a child safety seat, or forego the life-saving surgery, or suffer from the ailment that the drug was intended for, but had unforunate side effects that even the FDA did not foresee (after 7 years of research). I believe that the critical questions that a jury should ask are: Whether the accident and resulting injury was foreseeable by “expert designers; and whether the mfr. can reasonably prevent that injury w/o extraordinary costs. I suspect that the mother would have sued if the straps held the kid in, but caused some laceration, bruising or internal trauma to the kid. Heck, she might have sued the mfr. if she was rendered unconscious, and the infant became injured, when he couldn’t free himself from a burning car, or a car that went under water, etc…