Are air bags hurting more than helping?

May 17, 2004 - Anna Song, Reporting

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PORTLAND, ORE. - It was in southern Oregon last year that James Facey's life reached a crossroads. James, his girlfriend Michelle Klingman and their neighbor were headed to a store just outside of Medford when they got in a minor car accident. Their neighbor was in the back, Michelle was at the wheel and James was in the passenger seat.

"There was like a yellow jacket or a wasp on his hat in the back seat," Michelle said while thinking back to that day.

James continues, "and then it flew in her hair and I just remember looking at her and she was screaming with her hands, like shaking her head."

"The next thing I know, James is like 'watch the road!' said Michelle. "And we just went into a ditch. It didn't seem bad at all. I mean, it wasn't a bad accident."

"Then I just remember waking up and my body was like, totally warm and tingly feeling," James said.

James says he does not remember his head striking the windshield or the visor, nor does he remember the air bag deploying and striking him in the face. However, today James is left dealing with the result of that accident, which left him as a quadriplegic.

"There's just a lot of stuff I wish I would have done before the accident happened," he says. In James' case, his attorneys argue, the air bag should not have deployed in the accident that only caused minor damage to the car. They also say his seatbelt failed to properly restrain him and that, combined with an overly aggressive, oversized air bag, snapped his head back.

"Because of the way that particular vehicle was designed, he was forced too close to that air bag before it deployed and he's a quadriplegic today because of it," said Lawrence Baron, James' attorney.

"They told me not to expect any movement below the shoulders because they didn't want to get my hopes up," James said.

An air bag is an explosive device that blasts toward occupants at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour and in most cases they work well. Air bag injuries are rare, but sometimes deadly. Since 1990, 242 people have died because of air bags deploying in low-severity crashes, the majority of whom have been children. However, compared to those 242 deaths, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimates the devices have saved nearly 15,000 lives. The problem can come with the injuries air bags inflict on people, like the ones seen in the picture below.

"Fairly commonly at our clinic we see injuries to the jaw because of the impact of the air bag. We also see broken noses and black eyes," said Aimee Jackson with Therapeutic Associates.

Entisar Azouz dealt with all of the above after she swerved to avoid hitting another car earlier this year. Again, the accident itself was not serious. The front of her car went up on a curb causing minor damage, but it was still enough to trigger to the air bag.

"The thought was, I am dead, because suddenly I could not hear or see anything and then it was white. I could see white and I thought I was blind," said Entisar Azouz. The impact of the air bag scratched the cornea of Entisar's right eye, broke her nose, broke a rib and tore a ligament in her hand. Now she goes to physical therapy twice a week.
The vision in her right eye is still blurry and she is left wondering why a seemingly harmless accident has left her with these types of injuries.

"In my mind, I'm just so scared of those air bags. I'm sure they save lives in high speeds and highways, but I don't know how efficient they are in a situation like mine," Entisar said. In Entisar's case, the airbag in her 1989 Acura Legend was actually proven defective, yet she says Acura never notified her about it.

Oregon resident Norma Swanson was another victim of a defective airbag. In her case an airbag from her Nissan Altima deployed like a punching bag, landing a direct blow into her eye sockets. Norma's mascara left marks on the airbag that suggest she did not blink. "You don't really have to be a rocket scientist to see why somebody gets blinded by that airbag," said Swanson. Nissan later issued a recall for the 1994 and 1994 air bag systems.

For James Facey, the accident leaves him wondering what it would have been like to be in the Army. He had just signed up a few weeks earlier and was waiting to find out where he wold go for boot camp.

"I feel like an old person, like an old man that can't do anything anymore," he says.

Lawrence Baron is a Portland air bag lawyer. Click here for details about his work with Nissan air bag injury victims.