Personal injury" refers to the area of law that
seeks to protect victims who are harmed by the negligence of another person or entity. Negligence,
in turn, is defined as the failure to act with the prudence that a reasonable person, under the same circumstances, would
have exercised. Negligence occurs when a defendant’s conduct imposes an unreasonable risk upon another, which
results in injury to that person. Every person has a legal duty which requires that he or she conduct himself according
to a certain standard, so as to avoid unreasonable risk to others. If someone fails to conform with that
duty and causes injury to another person, he or she may be liable for the damages caused.
Rollovers account for 51% of
all deaths in standard sport utility vehicles, 36% of deaths in pickup trucks, and 19%
of deaths in standard cars. The rollover is an extremely severe aqutomobile accident and
an increasingly common one with the growing popularity of sport utility vehicles (SUVs). In 2002, the number of people killed
in rollover accidents involving SUVs rose 14 percent.