Paul CaputoServing Silicon Valley and All of Northern California
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 8,000 injury motor vehicle accidents happen every year as a result of tire failures. A significant percentage results from defective installation or manufacturing or maintenance. If you have suffered as a result of a defective tire, schedule your free case review with a member of our team.
Call our firm at (800) 900-0863 today!
A Brief Primer on Types of Tire Defect Accidents
Explosions
An exploding tire can cause a vehicle to veer off the road into oncoming traffic. Common causes of explosion include:
- Failures of the bead wire
- Failure of a multi-piece wheel
- So-called “zipper” failures
A bead failure can occur when you overfill a tire. A weak wire can suddenly fail to contain the outward pressure and set off a catastrophic explosion, resulting in injuries to the person inflating the tire as well as to bystanders.
Multi-piece wheel accidents have been linked to many injuries and death, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which at one point attempted to ban these rims altogether. Zipper failures – also known as sidewall failures – also occur often during inflation of tires. They are known as “zipper” failures because the sidewall blowout looks like an unzipped zipper after the explosion.
Belt and tread separations
Because it’s so hard to get rubber to adhere to steel, tires can often come apart under certain circumstances. For instance, if you drive in very hot weather at high velocities, the treads can separate and the tires can catastrophically fail.
A myriad of factors can provoke tread or belt separation, including:
- Poor manufacturing
- Use of improper solvents
- Careless inspection of the tires
- Impurities “cured” into the tire
- Shoddy machining processes
Building a Case for Just Compensation
To construct an effective case against the manufacturer, maintainer, or distributor of a tire that catastrophically failed, you must link the tire’s failure to your injuries and other harm. Not every case of tire failure will be grounds for a lawsuit or a claim. And your San Jose auto product liability attorney will likely need to launch a sophisticated investigation and get the opinions of experts in metallurgy, motor vehicle crash reconstruction, biochemistry, and vehicular dynamics.
Note that tire defect accident cases can get extremely complicated, and they may involve multiple claims from parties spread out geographically and over time. Class actions against Ford Motor Company and Bridgestone / Firestone in connection with a 14.4 million tire recall in 2000 led to years of litigations, for instance.
To keep matters simple, effective, and efficient, you want a team of San Jose defective tires lawyers who understands how to craft powerful and results driven claims.
Our lawyers at Caputo and Van Der Walde – Injury & Accident Attorneys have more than 85 years of combined experience specifically dealing with personal injury cases in San Jose, California, and we can provide a zero obligation, free case evaluation.