Opinion ID: 1180974
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Seat Belt Defense

Text: In late 1955, Ford and Chrysler first offered lap belts as optional equipment on their consumer automobiles. [2] In 1968, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208 [3] required automakers to install a lap belt for each occupant as well as a shoulder harness for the outboard front occupants on all automobiles made after January 1968. State and federal requirements for seat belt [4] installation were a response to increasingly authoritative evidence that seat belts could prevent many deaths and injuries arising from automobile accidents. [5] As seat belts became a standard automotive fixture, defendants increasingly raised the seat belt defense. At first, defense attorneys attempted to use the defense as a complete bar to recovery by showing that plaintiff was contributorily negligent. [6] These efforts were generally unsuccessful. [7] Courts were unwilling to totally deny recovery based on a finding of contributory negligence when it was almost certain in every case that nonuse of the seat belt was not a cause of the primary accident. [8] The focus of defense efforts rapidly shifted to asserting that the victim had failed to properly mitigate damages by not wearing a seat belt. [9] The mitigation theory sharply split the courts. Some jurisdictions accepted the idea that a plaintiff was responsible to take reasonable pre-accident safety measures. [10] Most courts refused to bend traditional mitigation concepts to cover the victim's pre-accident conduct. [11] Arizona followed this majority rule in Nash, decided in 1974. From that point until the present case, Arizona courts refused to allow defendants to use evidence of seat belt nonuse to prove either contributory negligence or failure to mitigate damages. Nash was based upon a three-prong rationale. The first was that evidence of seat belt nonuse was irrelevant because it ran counter to the traditional notion that, unless put on notice to the contrary, one has a right to assume that other persons upon the highway will not be negligent. 21 Ariz. App. at 532, 521 P.2d at 163, citing 2 F. HARPER & F. JAMES, THE LAW OF TORTS § 22.10 (1956). The court pointed out that a driver should have a reasonable expectation of safety on the highway and should not be required, therefore, to truss himself up in every known safety apparatus before driving. Id., citing Kleist, The Seat Belt Defense  An Exercise in Sophistry, 18 HASTINGS L.J. 613 (March 1967). Of course, Nash was decided at a time when Arizona courts followed contributory negligence  a theory now transformed to comparative negligence by A.R.S. § 12-2505(A), which became effective August 31, 1984 and applies to the case under consideration. See generally Butler & Gage, Comparative Negligence and Uniform Contribution: New Arizona Law, 20 ARIZ.B.J. 16 (June/July 1984). The next basis for the Nash analysis was the concept that use of a seat belt might in itself present dangers to motorists. If that were true, the law could hardly hold nonuse to be a violation of reasonable standards. As a corollary to the last mentioned principle, the court finally held there was no duty to fasten a seat belt, and failure to do so could not be considered a breach of any duty to minimize damages. 21 Ariz. App. at 532-33, 521 P.2d at 163-64. We must now decide whether the Nash position should remain the proper rule for the state of Arizona. In our view, the technological and legal changes that have occurred in the twelve years that passed between Nash and the decision in the present case must determine which view of the law represents better policy. One of the most dramatic changes that has occurred in this period is the general acceptance of comparative negligence principles.