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

Heading: an overview of the seat belt problem

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.
The rapid acceptance of comparative negligence principles in the United States came just after many jurisdictions had initially determined to accept or reject the seat belt defense under either contributory negligence or mitigation of damages theories. In 1960, only six states had adopted comparative negligence. [12] From 1965 to date, thirty-eight states have statutorily or judicially accepted comparative negligence. [13] Apparently only six states and the District of Columbia still adhere to the full contributory negligence defense. [14] Traditional contributory negligence theory, of course, militates for rejection of the seat belt defense. Contributory negligence is conceptualized in terms of conduct by plaintiff which contributed to the occurrence of the accident. See McDowell v. Davis, 104 Ariz. 69, 72, 448 P.2d 869, 872 (1968). Because seat belt nonuse seldom contributes to the occurrence of the accident, it does not easily fit into the theory of contributory negligence. But see Kington v. Camden, 19 Ariz. App. 361, 507 P.2d 700 (1973) (if driver had fastened her seat belt, she would not have lost control of her vehicle and caused crash). Further, if the seat belt defense is considered a form of contributory negligence, it would totally bar recovery. Theoretically, that was the situation under the former Arizona law. McDowell, supra . However, nonuse of a seat belt rarely causes all of plaintiff's injuries. In the typical accident, nonuse simply increases the number or severity of injuries beyond those which would have occurred had the plaintiff used a seat belt. Thus, under traditional contributory negligence principles, the seat belt defense would have constituted a harsh and untenable policy denying all recovery to nonusers, despite the lack of any causal nexus between seat belt nonuse and some of the injuries. Comparative negligence theories eliminate most of those problems because an adverse finding on nonuse does not bar recovery but merely reduces the damages in proportion to the contributing factor of seat belt nonuse. Thus, since Nash, courts originally unwilling to enforce a total bar to plaintiff's recovery under contributory negligence now are able to make a proportionate reduction of damages under comparative negligence concepts. [15] This, in fact, furthers the basic goal of comparative negligence theory  to allow an appraisal of all relevant facts in determining the correct damages to be given each claimant in a personal injury case. [16] Given this choice, courts able to apply comparative negligence principles to seat belt defense cases broke their analysis into at least two steps. Nonuse of the seat belt generally was not a factor contributing to the accident. However, by failing to use available seat belts, the plaintiff might have enhanced the injuries over those which would have occurred if the belts had been used. [17] Thus, to ascertain the proper damages, the emphasis switched to this second collision between the occupants and their environment. [18] Even with this new focus, the difficulty of determining the complex calculus of all conceivable causal connections involved in any accident dissuaded some courts from recognizing the defense. [19] Nevertheless, the rise of comparative negligence undermined much of the theoretical basis for rejection of the defense. At the same time, the law was beginning to catch up with technology.
Most seat belt systems are not passive; the user must buckle up. As the years passed following the start of widespread seat belt installation, designers and engineers devised safety restraint systems that were entirely passive. [20] It is now possible to equip automobiles with automatic harness or air bag systems that do not need to be manually activated. [21] Because of the expense of these devices, manufacturers have strenuously objected to installing them as standard equipment. [22] Faced with overwhelming evidence that passive restraint systems would save many lives and prevent countless injuries, in 1984 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration adopted changes to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208 requiring the installation of passive restraints in all new cars starting with model year 1990, unless states containing at least two-thirds of the nation's population enact mandatory seat belt use statutes before the regulation's effective date. [23] The federal standard also requires that conforming state statutes contain provisions specifying that violation of the seat belt law may be used to mitigate damages in any post-accident civil litigation and that nonuse will result in a criminal penalty of at least twenty-five dollars. [24] Prior to the promulgation of the new federal rule, no state had enacted a law requiring motorists to use seat belts. [25] It now appears that over twenty states have enacted at least some form of such legislation. [26] It remains to be seen whether these new laws will meet the federal requirements and whether courts will use them to impose a statutory duty to wear seat belts for purposes of establishing fault and assessing damages in tort litigation. Arizona has not yet passed any general legislation mandating seat belt use. But see A.R.S. § 28-907 requiring seat belt use for children four years old or younger.