Panama City Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

The following is a guest post from Rick Console, a New Jersey personal injury attorney from Console and Hollawell, PC.

As car manufacturers become more competitive with one another, they are rolling out cool new features while also ensuring that standard features, such as engines and transmissions, steering, and braking, are well up to par. The fact is it's difficult to buy a bad car these days. But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Forbes recently developed a list of vehicles to avoid, based on ratings from J.D. Powers & Associates surveys. For the most part, the vehicles that made this list had new technologies or features that, while intending to make the life of the driver easier, simply introduced new problems and issues. So, these manufactures earn an A for effort, D for execution. If you're interested in one of these vehicles, you might want to wait until the kinks are ironed out. The cars that made Forbes list include:

1. Jeep Liberty/Dodge Nitro. A rough ride, underpowered transmission, and poor interior comfort gave this vehicle bad grades. In addition, customers were displeased with one of the vehicle's options, a unique sliding canvas roof.
2. Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon. These smaller pickups are okay for recreational use, but buyers found the five-speed transmission crude in everyday use.
3. Nissan Armada. This incredibly large vehicle is outdated and outclassed by smaller crossover vehicles. Plus, its size makes it a real nightmare to parallel park.
4. GMC Sierra/Chevy Silverado 2500. These are great if you want to tow 17,500 pounds, but less than ideal when tooling around town. If you're transporting horses, this could be the vehicle for you, otherwise it got rough ratings for everyday use.
5. Dodge Caliber. Customers noted that its continuously variable transmission (CVT) was unresponsive and whiny, and that the interior was dull and cheap. With many other crossover wagons offering style, sophistication, and performance, this is one wagon not to consider.
6. Nissan Titan. Despite the large cash rebate offered to buyers, this full-sized pickup truck just doesn't get the performance ratings of its American competitors.
7. Smart ForTwo. It's a good idea and has terrific fuel economy, but this tiny vehicle simply doesn't have the performance to make up for it. Buyers say the transmission is slow and sloppy, and also claim that the premium gas it requires negates its good gas mileage.
8. Kia Sedona. It's not necessarily a bad choice, yet lags a bit in performance and sophistication, not to mention family-friendly technology that makes minivans competitive.
9. Volvo XC90. This luxury crossover is hard to handle and steer, and the 3.2-liter engine takes a while to get a vehicle this heavy up to speed. While the third-row seat sounds like a good idea, it's difficult to access and only comfortable for smaller children.
10. Mercedes Benz R-Class. The performance is sufficient and the interior is okay, but it certainly doesn't live up to the hype--or price--of a luxury minivan.

Continue reading "Avoid These Lemons" »

August 1st marks the anniversary of the first coast to coast trip made in an automobile. As you can imagine, driving an automobile that distance was difficult and a daring achievement. H. Nelson Jackson, a physician and businessman from Burlington, Vermont joined by Sewall K. Crocker, a mechanic, drove from San Francisco to New York. It took them 63 days and there were many challenges. The trip is detailed in 'Crossing the Country'. It is an interesting piece of history.

Making this 2,500 mile trip today would take roughly 40 hours or about 4 days. You would certainly not encounter the road conditions they experienced back in 1903. Automobile safety and mechanics have changed significantly as well. Today's cars are equipped with anti-lock brakes, seatbelts, a windshield and wipers just to name a few improvements that didn't exist then. Government and consumer groups perform many safety tests and rate cars for their crash and rollover safety. It's important for you to do your research before buying a car your family will be driving or will be a passenger in. One good source is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Defects and Recalls are documented and published. However, the reports often don't reach the car owners that need this information. Websites such as www.safercar.gov provide resources to identify specific recalls as well as tips of being a safe driver. You owe it to yourself and your family to be informed. They are relying on you to keep them safe.

A lot of people ask me, "What is the safest car I can buy to protect my family?" Just as there is no perfect car, there is no perfect answer to the question. But some generalities can be helpful, and websites provide research and comparisons of the relative safety of vehicles.

In my prior post topic 'Whiplash', I described to you the differences in stiffness between the platforms or chassis in various car makes and models and why that is important for your safety. The platforms designed by some manufacturers are relatively soft, allowing more crushing of the vehicle to occur in order to dissipate the crash forces before that force is transmitted to occupants. Occupants of these cars and trucks usually have fewer injuries than those in vehicles that are stiffer. A stiff vehicle platform and stiff surrounding structures reduce crush, thereby resulting in less property damage to the vehicle but, more importantly, typically much greater damage to the driver and passengers in that vehicle. Why? Because more force from the impact is sent through the body of the occupant since it wasn't dissipated during the crushing of as much metal. We call that dissipation of energy a "ride down."

If you're looking for a car to buy, you want one that has plenty of metal around you and that is soft enough to absorb the energy of a wreck by crushing appropriately to save you, not the vehicle itself. Another factor that affects your safety in a wreck is the geometry of the head rest. For example, is it close enough to your head to catch it quickly in a rear end collision, and does it go to the top of your ears so that your head won't be forced back over it? These are important considerations. Sit in a car and check the position of the head rest in relation to your head to see if it's geometry fits the criteria just mentioned.

Other factors affecting safety are things you can't so easily check like the number and quality of the roof welds, the design of door latches, side impact protection devices, if any, and seat belt geometry. All seat belts are not designed the same. Some have the anchor points on the floor so far forward that they fail to give adequate protection. Others permit a passenger's body to submarine under the lap part of the belt. That can cause terrible organ damage and paralysis. You can't sit in a car and effectively test these factors, but you can go to research sources. Some are very good. My favorite is Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit research group that gives very good safety comparisons for vehicles. Another excellent source is The Center for Auto Safety. And don't forget about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website.

In the end, remember that the fine appearance of a car's style doesn't equate to safety. It's beauty may be only skin deep.

Continue reading "What is the Safest Car You Can Buy for Your Family? " »

After more than a week of Toyota's gas pedal issue and the halt in production being headline news, there seems to be a fix. The article published in CNNMoney.com states that Toyota has developed a fix and is already shipping the new parts to dealers. Toyota has recalled 2.3 million vehicles in addition to halting production of its bestselling car, the Camry. In this article, it also states that Toyota has been aware of the 'unintended acceleration' issue for about 10 years. It took a major car dealer, which is a top seller of new cars, 10 years to find a fix to a problem that has already been suspected to be the cause of 19 deaths. How many accidents occurred in the 10 years that did not result in a death? Why does it take so long to find the cause and fix the problem? One would have to wonder if the cost of admitting there was a problem and finding the solution was higher than the cost of paying for injuries and deaths. After the first reported death, I would suspect a team of investigators would analyze the crash details to determine if the cause was due to mechanical failure or driver error. Maybe the results did not confirm either cause, but what about after the second death or the third or the tenth?

The most horrific and most widely publicized car accident related to a gas pedal issue was the death of an off-duty state trooper and 3 members of his family. The Lexus they were in sped out of control due to the gas pedal getting stuck on the floor mat, another issue Toyota has been aware of for several years. Why does it take a family being devastated by an accident in order for a manufacturer to take proactive steps to prevent this from happening to anyone else? This pattern seems to be prevalent in auto product liability cases.

Other manufacturers have had similar problems. Back in the 70's, Ford made headline news surrounding the gas tank explosions in the Pinto models. Again in the 90's, Crown Victoria's experienced the same gas tank explosion issue blamed on faulty design. With all the crash testing performed by the manufacturers, one would think that these issues would have been identified long before these models went into production.

Continue reading "Auto Recall Information: Your Safety and the Car Manufacturer" »