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Automotive "Crashworthiness:" An Untenable Doctrine, Stephen J. Werber

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is the purpose of this article to review the decisional law of automobile crashworthiness and to place it in the context of important policy considerations which justify such judicial determinations. It will be shown that the great majority of these decisions are entirely consistent with the doctine of "strict tort liability" as enunciated in section 402A of the Restatement of Torts, Second; that the questions sought to be submitted to juries in these cases are properly the subject of highly technical and complex legislative and administrative action on both a state and federal level; and that the few decisions …