In 1968, the first reported appellate court decision was issued stating that vehicle manufacturers must design vehicles to provide protection to motorists in crashes. See Larson v. General Motors. This obligation is called the duty to design and build vehicles that are crashworthy.

Over the past 56 years, as vehicle design has matured, the responsibility to provide crashworthy vehicles has been extended to airplanes, buses, cars, vans, SUVs, pick-up trucks, motorcycles and over-the-road trucks. The scope of this duty extends to safety features that can mitigate injury in virtually every type of crash including frontal, rear-end, side and rollover collisions. The expected levels of protection relate to the following:

• Protection when the occupant is or is not using the available seatbelts.
• Protection at various impact speeds.
• Protection against the disruption or damage to the fuel tank/fuel system.
• Protection against specific types of injury: e.g., head/brain, neck, spine, chest, legs, internal organs and burns.

In many instances, catastrophic injuries or fatal injuries in a crash are caused by inadequately designed crashworthy features. But, before this conclusion can be reached, we provide a basic understanding of vehicle design and the parameters that have to be addressed to determine if a person was injured because the vehicle was not crashworthy.