Over past decades defective and dangerous product injuries and deaths have declined, with the credit for this being a combination of regulatory agencies and tort law litigation. One of the largest problems now is with the regulatory agencies that have inadequate funding and other issues, including limited access to pertinent information of manufacturer. These lacks of information is because of political pressures and then add the fact that these agencies use their power to access information very limited.
Then there are trade secrets and confidential information that creates even more problems in product safety and defective products, plus the regulatory agencies being lenient. All of this often results in the regulatory agency reacting after there are problems in the form of voluntary recalls by manufacturers instead of preventing problems by using a preventive strategy.
The inefficiency of these agencies has been seen time after time, once an issue becomes clear instead of being on top of issues like one problem causing danger to children in the past. This was when children were being harmed by disposable lighters and nothing was done until there was a substantial numbers of injuries. Then the regulations made manufactures change the way these lighters were made, but it was a mandatory minimum standard for manufacturers.
Manufacturers and importers standard falls under the state common law liability, which means that when their products are dangerous or defective tort law litigation can result in holding them responsible for injury or death related directly to their product. Another of these prominent issues was with specific motor vehicles and this resulted in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 216, which regulates roof structure of vehicles, crashworthiness in most motor vehicles, and severe roof collapse.
These are to protect consumers and passengers in crashes as much as possible from impact, rollovers and roof crush, which result in severe injuries such as head, neck and spinal cord injuries. This was added too with FMVSS207, which is the standard for passenger vehicle seatbacks. This requires that folding forward brackets locks on seats must withstand 20 times the weight of the entire seat. This is below the force that can occur during a rear end collision and it is said that many lawn chairs pass the standards.
There are some auto manufacturers that have internal standards that are much more stringent than the seatback lock standards, while others have seats that collapse toward the back during a rear end collision and when this happens the driver or passenger can be ejected from the vehicle, suffering severe or fatal injuries in what could have been a collision that is survivable.
When regulations are weak then it reflects in the product safety monitoring and if it results in injuries or harm then it falls into the category of defective product liability. Manufacturers that experience suits for dangerous products using tort law often begin their own product safety regulations within the company for product quality assurance and optimal safety.
Citations:
Consumer Products Safety Commission- Regulations, Laws & Standards: https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Regulations-Laws–Standards/