About 90,000 Toyota Highlanders are being recalled due to defective safety seat belts. The defect involves the improper operation of the seat belt which can cause rear facing child safety seats to malfunction.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stated that the recall affects Highlander and Highlander hybrid sport utility vehicles manufactured in 2008. The NHTSA discovered the defect during standard testing. Testing showed that seat belts could not fasten properly when rear-facing child safety seats were used.

The defect may cause the child car seat to not be properly secured, allowing it to move during an auto accident.

Toyota Highlander vehicle owners will be notified by mail at the beginning of June.

Toyota has previously recalled vehicles due to defective safety seats. In 2002, a man was killed when his safety seat belt jammed after an accident, preventing him from being able to flee the vehicle when it caught fire. The man was in a Toyota Corolla. A civil trial began last year in California in order to determine if Toyota is liable for the death.

If a vehicle defect is the result of negligence, the vehicle manufacture can be held responsible for the serious injuries that may result from the defect. Car wreck attorneys are working on cases in which serious injury or fatality has resulted due to auto defects caused by negligence.

Two product liability cases filed in Marshall, Texas allege that General Motors used faulty seatbelts in vehicles. Both cases were filed the last week of February, 2008.

One case alleges that General Motors was negligent in regards to the design and manufacturing of the 2004 Cadillac DeVille. A woman sustained serious injuries during a car wreck when her seat belt failed to protect her.

The lawsuit claims that the seat belt was defective and violated the established federal standards for seat belt crashworthiness.

The second suit was filed regarding the crashworthiness of a 1993 Chevrolet Lumina. The suit alleges that a women sustained fatal injuries during a car wreck due to a faulty seat belt. The suit accuses General Motors of violating the federal standards of crashworthiness.

If your or a loved on have been seriously or fatally injured during a car wreck due to safety belt defects, contact a seat belt attorney at Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP at 1-800-460-0606. An experienced seat belt lawyer will be able to evaluate if you are eligible to seek compensation.

The United States Federal Government is scheduled to study how child safety seats fair in side-impact car wrecks. There are currently no federal standards that regulate the manufacturing of child safety seats to withstand a side-impact car wreck. Special products are already in stores that have been developed by European manufacturers.

Child safety seats are designed to offer protection in front-impact car wrecks, which is the most common form of car wreck. Side-impact car wrecks have the highest rate of serious injury and fatality. In a side-impact car wreck, a child can sustain serious injuries to the head, face, chest and thorax, due to improperly designed child safety seats.

Currently, there is no way to test if the newly manufactured safety features for child car seats will be effective in side-impact car wrecks.

In the United States, there is no way to document the effectiveness of the products since there is no standard crash test dummy or test procedure. American car safety seat manufactures will not begin producing safety products until the Federal Government establishes procedures and guidelines, which is scheduled for later this year.

If your child, or the child of a loved one, has been seriously or fatally injured in a car wreck due to defects in a child safety seat, contact a child safety seat attorney at Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP at 1-800-460-0606. An experienced child safety seat lawyer will be able to evaluate if you are eligible to seek compensation.