T-Bone Collisions Affect Passengers Differently Depending on Their Position

As a passenger in a vehicle, you depend upon the driver to keep you safe. You must also depend upon drivers of other vehicles. A T-Bone accident lawyer knows sometimes a motorist runs a traffic light or pulls out without looking for oncoming traffic. The car hitting at a perpendicular angle forms a “T” with the struck vehicle.

Your chances of surviving this common type of accident without a serious or deadly injury depend on whether you were on the side of the car sustaining impact or whether you were on the opposite side of the vehicle. If you were on the side of the car sustaining impact, you are considered a “near-side” passenger. If you were on the other side, you are considered a “far-side” passenger.

What Risks Do Passengers Face in T-Bone Collisions?

Passengers who are sitting on the near-side face the most substantial risks of injuries because their bodies absorb the bulk of the impact of the crash. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 214 was established in 1997 according to Virginia Tech. The goal was to put minimum safety standards in place for car side panels in order to protect passengers sitting adjacent to those panels (near-side passengers).

Of victims killed in a T-Bone accident, 76 percent are near-side passengers. Of victims injured in a T-Bone accident, 57 percent are near-side passengers. Far-side passengers account for 24 percent of deaths and 43 percent of injuries in T-Bone crashes.

Those on the near-side need better protections since the death toll remains so high. There are currently no federal mandates for side airbags, but regulators could move forward with imposing new regulation if they wished to require side airbags as a standard safety feature.

Far-side passengers are less likely to die or be badly hurt. But they also receive even less protection from federal safety standards in the event of a side-impact accident. Association for Advancement of Automotive Medicine indicates there are no federal safety standards in place specifically designed to reduce risk of injuries for people in side-impact crashes who are sitting opposite the side of impact.

Protections should be put in place for these passengers, as approximately 17,000 far-side passengers die each year in T-Bone or rollover crashes. The majority of people killed or badly hurt suffer chest or head injuries: 21 percent sustain head trauma and 33 percent sustain chest trauma. Most far-side passengers suffer injury or death because their head or chest strikes the interior on the opposite side of the vehicle (the side struck in the T-Bone crash).

Pretension safety belts could help prevent these passengers from hitting the opposite side of the car, as could four point V-shaped belts with two shoulder traps instead of just one.