Crashworthiness cases are merely a subset of design defect cases.
Crashworthiness cases involve claims that a design defect caused or enhanced the injuries of a vehicle's occupants during a crash.
To identify a crashworthiness claim, one must examine the interplay among the circumstances of the accident, the performance of the vehicle during the accident, and the injuries suffered.
Such defects may cause or enhance injuries, or may fail to provide suitable protection from injury in foreseeable accidents.
Crashworthiness claims have taken many forms, both in Texas litigation and throughout state and federal courts.
Claims that a manufacturer should be held liable for failure to provide protection to vehicle occupants in the event of an automobile collision began to reach the courts in the early 1960s.
The reaction was strong and sharply divided; in the words of one court, such claims had touched off "a new 'War Between the States' unsurpassed since 1865.
" Courts all over the United States struggled with this new theory and decisions were inconsistent.
The decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Larsen v.
General Motors Corporation, 391 F.
2d 495 (8th Cir.
1968), is credited with enunciating the opposing, and eventually, prevailing view:

While automobiles are not made for the purpose of colliding with each other, a frequent and inevitable contingency of normal automobile use will result in collisions and injury-producing impacts.
No rational basis exists for limiting recovery to situations where the defect in design or manufacture was the causative factor of the accident, as the accident and the resulting injury, usually caused by the so-called "second collision" of the passenger with the interior part of the automobile, all are foreseeable.
Where the injuries or enhanced injuries are due to the manufacturer's failure to use reasonable care to avoid subjecting the user of its products to an unreasonable risk of injury, general negligence principles should be applicable.
The sole function of an automobile is not just to provide a means of transportation, it is to provide a means of safe transportation or as safe as is reasonably possible under the present state of the art.

In the State of Texas, the Texas Supreme Court noted that the crashworthiness doctrine was merely a logical extension of long-articulated principles of Texas products liability law and that cases asserting the doctrine were to be charged as any design defect case:

There is no valid distinction in strict liability between a conscious design defect causing an accident and a conscious design defect causing an injury.
By the same token, there is no rational basis for a difference in the manner of submission of the issues to be determined by the fact finder.
We have not required a balancing of enumerated factors in jury submission by our previous writings, and, as stated earlier, we disapprove the ruling of the Court of Civil Appeals that such is required in a crashworthiness case.

Turner v.
General Motors Corp.
, 584 S.
W.
2d 844, 848 (Tex.
1979).
Automotive Product cases, crash worthiness cases, are now litigated throughout the nation.
Fifty years ago, this was a new concept and relatively unknown.
Now, the people of the United States have been inundated with media discussing the Ford Pinto gas tanks, the Ford/Firestone debacle of the mid to late 1990s and various other high-profile vehicle defects.