Daily News
July 7, 2001

Awarded $9.5M in Car Death

Six years after Manuela Chevere died in a relatively minor car crash blamed on a faulty safety restraint, her family has been awarded $9.5 million from the car's manufacturer.

A Bronx Supreme Court jury faulted Hyundai on Thursday in Chevere's 1995 death, which her family's lawyer said the mother of four might have survived if she had not been using the car's shoulder harness, a passive restraint device.

"There are millions of cars out there with this kind of defective system," Alan Shapey said yesterday at a news conference at his downtown Manhattan law office of Lipsig, Shapey, Manus & Moverman.

Joined by Chevere's husband, Raphael, 69, and their daughters, Shapey called on the federal government to modify its crash test requirements.  Hyundai contended Chevere's shoulder harness did not cause her death and vowed to appeal the verdict.  The company said in a statement that Chevere's 1993 Sonata "met or exceeded all federal safety standards."

Raphael Chevere was driving the Hyundai in June 1995 when another car made a sudden left turn into his path on Southern Blvd. at 180th St. in the Bronx.

Chevere, 37, was in the front passenger seat, restrained by the car's automatic motorized shoulder harness. She was not using the manual lap belt.  The impact propelled her under the harness, and she took the full impact of the crash on her chest. She died two hours later of a torn pulmonary vein. Shapey said Hyundai, following minimal federal standards, used only one size crash-test dummy in its safety tests.

The 5-foot-10, 170-pound dummy, whose seat was placed half-way along its track in Hyundai's tests, absorbed the impact in the pelvis when its knees hit the dashboard, Shapey said. In contrast, Chevere's knees never made it to the dash. The 5-foot-3, 175-pound woman had her seat pushed all the way back.

"If she had been completely unbelted, there was a 99% chance she would have survived," Shapey said.

Chevere's oldest daughter, Rosemarie, said the government standards discriminate against women, noting that most women, including herself and her two sisters, Jessica and Carla, are smaller than the crash-test dummy.

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