Miami Springs Passenger Safety

In many car collisions in Miami Springs and Florida, there are passengers in a vehicle as well as drivers and these occupants may suffer serious injuries, especially in a side impact collision. While a driver is protected by their insurance company, passengers sometimes struggle to get fair compensation for their injuries.

If you have been injured while a passenger in a vehicle, you do have rights. To learn more, contact the law firm of Flaxman Law Group for a free accident consultation. The attorneys at Flaxman Law Group have more than six decades of combined experience and have established a reputation for aggressively advocating on behalf of plaintiffs.

One of the most tragic types of passenger injuries involves children. Since children are smaller, they tend to be more vulnerable to head injuries and other serious injuries. The safest place for child passengers is in the rear seat, in an age-appropriate safety restraint system. Unfortunately, when children are allowed to sit in the front seat or are not placed in a special car seat, they may suffer catastrophic or fatal injuries in a traffic collision.

Even with age-appropriate safety restraint systems, however, child injury can occur. In some cases, child seats and safety restraint systems are not as safe as manufacturers would like customers to believe or product defects cause the systems to fail. In other cases, the severity of a serious car or truck accident simply means that even with a proper car seat a child is seriously or fatally injured due to the force of the impact.

For adult passengers, wearing a seatbelt correctly can make all the difference. When using a three-point seatbelt, make sure that the lap portion of the belt is across the hips and not the stomach. This is because the hip bones can sustain more force in a crash than the stomach. Positioning a seat belt too high can lead to stomach and internal organ injuries.

Once the lap portion of the seat belt is correctly positioned, arrange the shoulder harness portion of the belt so that it sits low on the chest and torso. Do not allow the belt to sit high near the face and neck. For adult passengers under 5’3”, the seat belt or seat may require some adjusting to get the correct position, but this is crucial since an incorrectly positioned shoulder harnesses can cause head injuries and lacerations to the face. In some cases, they can be life-threatening if they cut into the arteries of a passenger’s shoulder in a crash.

If you have been injured despite taking precautions, contact Flaxman Law Group to find out how you can seek compensation. We can cut through some of the confusion by helping you understand your legal options and by helping you understand whether you have a legal claim. Contact our full-service law firm to arrange for a free accident consultation to discuss your case.