Lewis & Tompkins Blog

Allstate has been doing this for over 35 years. Allstate for many years perpetrated the myth that injuries were not serious when they occurred in accidents where there was not a lot of
damage to the auto bumpers or in cases they called "low speed accidents."

This was a strategy that they developed in conjunction with a law they obtained from Congress over the objections of the National Highway Department (the predecessor to the Department of Transportation). The law was to mandate bumpers that were inexpensive to repair in a low speed accident. That law was promoted by Allstate and State Farm and the insurance industry because of their complaints about the excessive (the insurance companies' term) cost of repair of bumpers in rear end collisions. Despite the fact that the United States Department of Transportation states openly that there is no relationship between auto property damage to a bumper and the severity of a plaintiff's injury. The reason that they take that position is that pursuant to Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1901 et. seq. and § 1921 the National Highway Safety Commission has promulgated bumper standards to lower the costs of repairing the bumpers themselves. These bumpers have the sole purpose of protecting the sheet metal and lights adjacent to the bumper.
This is the only "consumer cost measure" (read -save the insurance industry money when they have to repair a car).
The federal regulations promulgated pursuant to the statute states that its purpose is to reduce physical damage to the front and rear ends of a passenger motor vehicle from low speed collisions. Bumpers are not made to protect the passengers of the auto and unfortunately do not protect passengers from injury. Many critics of the Motor vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act claimed at the time that the bumpers as they were currently made before the law protected passengers and that under the new law (post early 1970's) actually exacerbate passengers injuries.

Until this statute was passed every other federal law regarding automobiles were safety measures or gas cutting measures.

A short summary of the bumper standards quickly reveal their purpose which is to minimize money damages to repair a bumper from an impact to the bumper:

I. Federal Bumper Standards.

A. 49 CFR Part 581 - Bumper Standards
B. § 581.1 Scope. This standard establishes requirements for the impact resistance of vehicles in low speed front and rear collisions.
C. § 581.2 Purpose. The purpose of this standard is to reduce physical damage to the front and rear ends of a passenger motor vehicle from low speed collisions.

The bumper standards then set forth minimum damage requirements that front and rear bumpers must meet at 1.5 m.p.h. and 2.5 m.p.h. collisions with a force that exceeds 2,000 lb. The government requires bumpers on passenger cars to prevent damage to the car body and safety related equipment at barrier impact speeds of up to 2 1/2 m.p.h. The test is administered by swinging a steel pendulum test device into the front or rear bumper of the vehicle, while the vehicle is at rest on a concrete flat surface. See 49 CFR §§ 581.5-7.

The most interesting thing about these standards from a plaintiff's viewpoint is that they are not safety standards. They are considered by the government to be a consumer cost containment measure. Of course, in reality the standards reduce the costs of insurance companies for the repair of damaged bumpers.

II. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

A. Authority for the safety standards comes from the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, 15 U.S. C. §§ 1392,1401,1403, and 1407.
B. 49 CFR Part 571 - Contains all federal safety standards. There is no mention of bumpers contained in those standards.
C. 49 CFR §571.1 Scope. This part contains the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for motor vehicles established under section 103 of the National Traffic and Motor vehicle Safety Act of 1965.
D. Standards exist for seat belts, lap belts, airbags, brakes, child restraints, school bus rollovers, etc. In fact, there are 52 different safety standards; none of which deal with bumpers.

The bio-mechanical engineers at the National Highway Safety Commission explain that the bumper standards are antagonistic to the idea of minimizing auto passenger injuries. Passenger safety is promoted by crumple zones that give way in a collision yet protect the passenger. Impact resistant bumpers that met the bumper standards actually have the undesired effect that they pass the energy of a collision into the passenger compartment of the vehicle. The result is that the federal bumper standards reduce the cost of repairing bumpers while increasing the severity of injury to the passengers inside a vehicle.

What is most insidious is that insurance companies use the lower repair costs and/or the lack of great visible damage to the auto to unfairly minimize or deny the existence of injuries to the injured drivers and passengers while their sponsorship of these federal bumper standards is a significant cause of an increase in severity of their insured’s injuries.

AutoFacts Winter, 1994 edition, an official publication of the United States Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, explains the purpose of a bumper as follows: A car bumper is designed to avoid or reduce damage in a low speed collision. "It is not a safety device to prevent or reduce injuries to people in the car."

Many older people can remember when bumpers were made of steel and were offset from the body of an automobile. These are the two basic designs that made bumpers expensive to repair and created safety for the occupants of the vehicle. No one has calculated the amount of physical damage done to the backs and health of the millions of Americans injured in rear-end accidents due to Allstate and State Farms sponsorship of this bill. Nor has anyone calculated the amount of money saved by these insurance companies by lying to judges, juries and claimant's lawyers for the passed 35 years that your client "couldn't have been seriously injured as there was only $100-$200 damage in this accident." Finally, of course, the insurance companies saved more money as it did become cheaper to repair the bumpers of cars involved in motor vehicle accidents.
This is what the insurance companies see as a win-win. They obtained lower repair bills that they had to pay; and obtained lower verdicts in personal injury damage cases, as well based on the false assumptions that people were not so seriously as they were claiming. Of course, it is a lose-lose proposition for everyone else in the society.