If the San Francisco Bay Bridge, or at least the S curve portion of it, was a normal consumer product it would be defective.

In the new Bay Area Blog by the New York Times, Michelle Quinn asks whether bridge engineers should assume that drivers will behave badly.  The answer, is yes!

In fact, if the San Francisco Bay Bridge was a normal consumer product the law would require that engineers do just that or the bridge would clearly be defective and the maker subject to strict liability.

Under product liability law, a manufacturer or maker of a product is required to guard against reasonably foreseeable use including misuse of their product.  Ms. Quinn in her post asks if there is anything that Caltrans can do to make the bridge safer knowing how folks drive and given the design of the S curve, or will it simply take more accidents to slow folks down.

One of the questions under a standard product liability analysis to determine if the S curve is defective would be – did Caltrans know or should they have reasonably known of the dangers of the S curve?

According to the San Francisco Chronicle there have been 42 crashes and one fatality since the S curve portion opened on September 8 – less than 65 days ago – I’d say that’s a defective product from a mile away.

Tags: San Francisco Personal Injury Attorney comments on the San Francisco Bay Bridge according to product liability law.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Product Liability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.