Headrest Defect Causes Deadly Hangman’s Fracture In Minor Car Accidents

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If You Drive a 2016 or Newer GM Vehicle, Your Life And Your Passenger’s Lives May Be At Risk

Vehicle Safety Lawyer Todd Tracy uncovers a headrest defect that causes death or paralysis. Watch this video to find out if you or a loved one may have a crashworthiness case against the manufacturer.

If you, a family member or a friend have suffered a traumatic car accident injury or they were killed in an auto accident, you need to contact a car accident lawyer with a successful record in court for fighting the world’s biggest car companies.

Contact Todd Tracy here to “Find Out If You Have A Case” or call 214-324-9000.

For those of you who prefer to read, the transcript of Todd’s consumer alert is below:

Headrest Defect Causes Deadly Hangman’s Fracture In Minor Car Accidents

Hello. I’m vehicle safety lawyer Todd Tracy and I’m here at my vehicle crash lab in Dallas, Texas and I want to give you a consumer alert on a particular defect that we see happening on a number of General Motors vehicles.

Specifically this is a 2016 Chevy Malibu and you will notice that the head restraint has actually broken off in what is a very mild rear impact action. I will tell you, as I look at the crush on this particular vehicle, this is a very minor impact. The only damage that we see other than the structure, we see the back light broken out. None of the other glass in the entire vehicle is broken out.

So I start asking myself the question, “What is involved in this particular accident?” and then I realized that the head restraint on this particular vehicle has literally broken apart.

Headrest Restraint Failure

Now the head restraint on a vehicle is critically important to supporting the head-neck complex and when the headrest restraint fractures and separates like this, the head-neck complex experiences so much hyperextension that your head literally separates from the spine and you die of what’s called a “hangman’s fracture”.

Sometimes I call this “internal decapitation”. This death should never have happened because in such a minor accident, you should have walked away from this with no injuries whatsoever and they would have walked away if their head restraint had performed as designed.

The reason this happened is because we have done an evaluation of the head restraints that General Motors is using and we have four cases identical to this involving Chevrolets vehicles that are all manufactured by General Motors.

The reason this is happening is because the head restraint post, they started using a weaker material that’s very brittle and you will notice that the head restraint post is hollow. The second that this happens and your headrest restraint fails, your head-neck complex has no support whatsoever.

This is a critically important vehicle safety system in our vehicle and I will tell you this, that if we already have four cases like this, there are going to be thousands and thousands of people that are exposed to this serious risk of injury or death and if you or a loved one happen to be involved in a General Motors vehicle that’s 2016 or newer and it involved a rear impact accident and you or a loved one are seriously injured or killed, you need to hire a highly qualified attorney that knows how to fight the vehicle industry.

[End of transcript]