Blazer SUV Rollover Accidents

The national law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, represents victims of rollover accidents and other vehicle crashes in personal injury lawsuits. If you or a family member have been injured in a Chevrolet Blazer rollover accident, or have lost a family member in a Blazer SUV rollover accident, please click here to contact a Lieff Cabraser attorney for a free, prompt, no-obligation review of your case.

2007 Report Confirms Chevy Blazer Has More Driver Deaths Than Any Other Vehicle

In April 2007, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ("IIHS") again found that two-door, two-wheel drive Chevrolet Blazers had the highest rate of driver deaths from 2002 through 2005. Chevrolet Blazers built from 2001 to 2004 had the high rate of 232 driver deaths per million registered vehicles during the four-year span. (Chevrolet discontinued the Chevy Blazer in 2005). The study of over 200 passenger vehicles conducted by IIHS included rates of driver deaths in all crashes plus rates in multiple-vehicle, single-vehicle, and single-vehicle rollover crashes.

To determine the driver death rate, the IIHS used data from the federal government's Fatality Analysis Reporting System and registration counts from The Polk Company, a Michigan-based provider of automotive information. The rate represented the reported number of driver deaths divided by the model's number of registered years, according to data from.

This study reaffirms conclusions made in March 2005 by IIHS on vehicle safety. The 2005 IIHS report analyzed the risk of death for almost 200 car, minivan, SUV and pickup truck models manufactured between 1999 and 2002. In that study, the institute found that the two-door, two-wheel drive Chevrolet Blazer had the highest death rate of any vehicle at 308 driver deaths per million registered years, as well as the highest rollover death at 251 per million. The report also found that the Chevy Blazer four-door, two-wheel drive had one of the highest rates of driver death of the vehicles studied. To read a copy of the study, click here.

SUV Rollover Dangers

A number of potential safety issues and vehicle defects can contribute to the occurance of SUV rollovers and lead to serious injury or death in the event of a rollover accident. Potential safety issues include:

The vehicle is defective in its handling and stability because it is top-heavy and prone to heavy oversteering by drivers, making a rollover accident likely;
The vehicle is equipped with defective door latches that are too weak to hold the doors shut in a rollover accident, causing passengers to be ejected from these vehicles;
The roof-strength of the SUV is deficient, resulting in a collapse of the roof in a rollover accident;
The vehicle is not equipped with laminated safety glass which would help prevent passengers from being ejected in SUV rollovers; and
The seat belts are defective because they do not automatically retract and tighten during an accident.