Tragedy on Interstate 40
A bus full of people coming from a religious event faced the sheer horror of a malfunctioning tire and violent impact. The church group was returning from a religious conference on their way back home to North Carolina when the front tire on the bus "blew-out" and the bus crossed the median and smashed into an SUV and tractor-trailer traveling in the opposite direction. Sadly, six members of the church group, a passenger in the SUV, and the driver of the tractor-trailer died as a result of the horrific accident.
As eight more travelers cling to their lives in Tennessee hospitals, and as dozens of families deal with the shock and raw emotions of lives cut short, there are many questions left unanswered regarding the crash.
When a vehicle operates normally and then suffers a malfunction causing a chain of events leading to death and destruction, people look for someone to blame. Very often the driver of the vehicle who created the hazardous condition must take the blame and suffer the consequences. However, in certain vehicle accidents, the vehicle itself creats the dangerous condition due to poor manufacturing, faulty maintenance or even a poor design.
Determining why an accident created such devastation doesn't replace or fill the void that the injury and death have left, but may often help heal the victims and help provide them monetary compensation for the losses.
The Tennessee bus accident is still under investigation, and state police and investigators are working tirelessly to determine why the tire malfunctioned. In the legal realm, a malfunctioning tire is nothing new; it falls under the large umbrella of a products liability claim.
Products liability claims are usually broken down into three categories.
- Manufacturing defect;
- Design Defect; or
- Inadequate Warnings
A malfunctioning tire would fall into one of the first two categories.
For a manufacturing-defect case, generally the victims would have to show that the tire malfunctioned due to a faulty or improper manufacturing process or due to use of materials that were inadequate or unable to perform their intended use.
A design defect involves a product that is unable to perform the intended use regardless of what materials or how precise the manufacturing process and systems were used, or that the design was inherently dangerous from its inception.
Only after a thorough investigation and report will the personal injury and wrongful death claims be ripe for review and analysis. For more insight into the legal aspects of tragedy and vehicle accidents, contact a Scranton personal injury lawyer at Rogan Law.
Tragic vehicle accidents may only be deterred by the strict enforcement of products liability sanctions and by large financial settlements against careless manufacturers!