When it comes to car safety, many Nashville, Tennessee, residents no doubt rely on the safety features that come with their vehicles, such as air bags, seat belts and child safety locks on doors. The thought is these safety features are there to protect drivers and passengers and would work every time.
Over the years though, this thought has been disproven time and time again by accidents, injuries and recalls. For some, these equipment failures have even led to product liability lawsuits.
Recently, Ford Motor recalled more than 12,500 SUVs and cars due to child lock failure. This is a rather dangerous recall as the child lock failure could lead to serious injuries to children.
With rear door child locks, the safety feature is that the doors can only be opened from the outside. The idea is this takes away the risk of injury if a child tried opening a back door when a car was in motion.
However, with certain Ford models, it turns out there were faulty parts used. According to Ford, in some vehicles, once the doors are opened and closed enough times, the mechanism that keeps the door locked from the inside can move to the unlocked position. In cases where this mechanism has moved, this would mean children could open the back door while the car was in motion.
This recall begins on Aug. 5 and includes the 2013 Ford Lincoln MKS, Explorer and Taurus models. The affected vehicles were built between Nov. 29 and Dec. 12.