Tire Blowout Results in the Death of 1-Year-Old Boy
A blown tire resulted in a rollover accident that ejected a one-year-old boy from the vehicle. The boy was later found dead.
The accident occurred on I-75 in Broward County at about 4:30 p.m. A preliminary investigation revealed that a tire blowout was the cause of the accident. According to bystanders, the vehicle took a sudden swerve right, rolling over several times. The child and a car seat were located near the wreckage. The one-year-old boy was found dead in a nearby puddle. The boy was not in a child-safety seat and none of the adults in the vehicle were wearing seatbelts.
Three children and three adults were transported from the scene for medical attention. Two of the injured adults were the parents of the one-year-old boy. The family indicated that their child was missing to first responders.
First Responders Attempt to Locate the Child
Police and first responders spent the next two hours attempting to locate the boy who’d been thrown from the cabin of the vehicle. With each second that passed, they knew that it became less likely that they would find him alive. They shut down traffic in the eastbound lanes for at least five hours attempting to locate the boy and deployed drones in the effort as well. Fifty firefighters were deployed to canvas the area as well as K-9 units. Divers searched the canal for any sign of a body. When the truck was finally pulled from the embankment, they found the body of the 1-year-old boy.
Assessing Liability
There’s simply no way to get around the fact that the child would likely still be alive if they’d been strapped into their child safety seat. Any jury hearing a case from a plaintiff in this accident would likely not sympathize with parents who allowed their child to be thrown from the vehicle.
If, however, the tire was still under warranty when it blew out, the plaintiffs would still have a solid case, but its prospects before a jury aren’t good. This would force an attorney representing the plaintiffs to settle, meaning that whatever settlement they received would probably not be very good compared to other wrongful death settlements of this nature.
An attorney for the defense would outline all the tragic mistakes the parents made that led to the death of their son. This would include failing to properly secure the boy in a child safety seat and failing themselves to wear seatbelts.
While that argument wouldn’t completely absolve the tire manufacturer of liability, it would certainly reduce their proportion of liability under the law. In this case, the parents could end up getting assigned the vast majority of the liability.
A lawsuit will probably never be filed.
Talk to a Florida Defective Tire Attorney
If you’ve suffered an injury from a tire blowout accident, you can recover damages even if the accident was partly your fault. Call the Coral Gables tire defect attorneys at Halpern, Santos & Pinkert today and allow us to investigate the tire and the circumstances surrounding the accident. You may be entitled to recover more than you think.
Resource:
local10.com/news/local/2020/09/03/search-on-for-1-year-old-after-car-overturns-on-i-75/
https://www.tiredefectattorney.com/pennsylvania-man-dies-in-tire-blowout-accident/
