Computer Generated Illustration By
Richard Kolker
For Timedanger Zone
Computer-generated illustration by Richard Kolker for TIME Danger zone This artist’s representation highlights the potential hazard from an exploding air bag BUSINESS B LOW O U T f or e ns ic i n v e s t ig at or s a l fa r i e l l o , whose job is to deconstruct car crashes, has witnessed a catalog of carnage caused by air bags over the past two decades. In his collection, there is a photo of a woman who has been horribly scarred by an inflating air bag. There’s an X-ray of a driver’s broken wrists snapped in the “fling zone†of an air bag that mashed both arms from a 10-and-2 position into the car’s roof. He can cite nu- merous drivers who suffered torn aortas or lacerated brain stems, all the result of being “punched†by an air bag inflating at 200 m.p.h. (322 km/h).
“What’s sitting in the front of the steering wheel is an explo- sive device,†explains Fariello, the author of Airbag Injuries: Causation & Federal Regula- tion. “Nasty, unexpected events can occur.†None have been nastier than the injuries and deaths caused by exploding inflators in air bags made by automotive supplier Takata Corp., based in Tokyo. Its air bags have been blamed for killing five motorists in the U.S. so far. More than 10 million cars from 10 makers—including BMW, Chrys- ler, Honda, Nissan and Toyota—have been recalled. On Nov.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered Takata to expand its most recent recall from a regional one to a national one. Takata declined on the ba- sis that the problem is confined to areas like Florida with high relative humidity. Toyota and Honda are following NHTSA’s advice and issued a national recall. All the cars are from model year 2011 or older. Takata’s suspect inflation canisters con- tain a propellant—tablets of ammonium nitrate—that is ignited at the onset of a crash to initiate a chemical reaction that produces
AIR BAGS ARE ME ANT TO SAVE LIVES.
NOW A MASSIVE RECALL SHOWS HOW THE Y SOME TIMES CAN TURN DE ADLY BY BILL
SAPORITO BUSINESS | CARS bear when your car crashes into another vehicle or object. In a collision, your car stops abruptly, but you don’t. Your head and body keep moving forward, translat- ing that energy according to Newtonian physics until some other force arrests it. Before the advent of air bags and seat belts, this “velocity debt†was repaid—at terrible cost—when your head or body smashed into the steering column or dashboard. To stop your head’s violent forward mo- tion requires considerable counterviolence.
After a car’s accelerometers and sensors de- tect a crash pulse—the rapid deceleration that signals
impact—an algorithm in the electronic control unit (ECU) then decides whether to deploy the air bag and at what pressure. If the ECU says deploy, the explo- sion that rapidly expands an air bag also hurtles it toward your head at speeds rang- ing from 98 m.p.h. to 200 m.p.h. (158 km/h to 322 km/h). In fact, the bag should be deflating by the time your head makes contact, creating a cushioning force that dissipates the energy of the crash by distrib- uting it over the larger surface area of the bag. The entire process of sensing and de- ploying the air bag has to take place in 20 to 30 milliseconds, by which time your head has already moved forward five inches.
Air bags have been saving lives since 1973, when General Motors produced 1,000 Chevrolet Impalas equipped with air bags as an option. According to Byron Bloch, an auto-safety expert who has long campaigned for better air bags, Chevy produced a good one: a dual-pressure sys- tem that protected children from a fully powered air bag’s potentially lethal force. GM was satisfied with the technology— the concept was patented in 1953—and Bloch said the company was ready to ex- pand the program. “We were going to have dual-pressure air bags phased in the ’74–’75 model year,†he says. Instead, air bags disappeared for nearly 20 years.
Why? The Big Three auto com- panies, led by Ford boss Henry Ford II and his deputy Lee Iacocca, convinced Presi- dent Richard Nixon that air bags wouldn’t be cost-effective. The pressure on the Big Three to offer air bags ultimately came from smaller competitors, like Volvo, that made air bags standard equipment. With consumers clamoring for protection, Congress made air bags mandatory as of September 1998. The design and testing standards of these late-1990s air bags, however, would not make them better than the ones GM used in the early 1970s.
When two elderly women were killed by air bags in the early ’90s, it was a lethal indication that there were flaws. “The elderly die very easily in car crashes,†says Fariello, who has been a paid expert witness for both plaintiffs and defendants in injury lawsuits. The force of the deployed air bag, even in low-speed fender benders, was causing fatal chest and brain injuries. Short women were be- ing injured because they moved their seats forward to reach the gas and brake pedals. As a result, their faces were within 10 in. of the steering wheel, which experts say is the minimum safety margin.
Auto-industry safety organizations, consumer groups, the Society of Automo- tive Engineers, NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have debat- ed test conditions for decades. NHTSA’s frontal tests are run at 35 m.p.h. (56 km/h) into a rigid barrier using a crash-test dummy optimized for a
50th-percentile male—about 172 lb. and 5 ft. 9 in. (78 kg and 175 cm). Yet most crashes happen at speeds below 35 m.p.h., and they involve all kinds of people, objects and crash an- gles. Hitting a pole is different from hit- ting a wall or another vehicle.
The test method meant that passengers who weren’t perfectly average were “out of position,†in the vernacular of crash nitrogen gas to fill the bag. Moisture may be destabilizing the ammonium nitrate. In the faulty inflators, the blast shatters the can- ister, sending metal shards through the air bag toward the driver. Arriving at the scene of one such incident, police thought the vic- tim had been shot in the face before crash- ing. “My understanding is our products in this accident worked abnormally,†said Hi- roshi Shimizu, who is in charge of Takata’s global quality assurance, when prodded by Nevada Senator Dean Heller during Senate-committee testimony on Nov.
On Dec. 2, Toyota called for a joint in- dustry initiative to independently test the Takata bags. “The safety, security and peace of mind for our customers are our highest priority, and I believe this is shared with all the other automakers,†said Simon Nagata, CEO of Toyota’s North American manufacturing unit. Perhaps these scenes—accident reports detailing both gore and tragedy, congres- sional hearings well stocked with outrage, and executives who struggle for the right tone of response—should come as no surprise.
It has, after all, been a very bad year for the auto industry. General Motors’ re- call of 2.6 million vehicles earlier in 2014 stemmed in part from defects that led to air bags’ not deploying at all, causing in- jury and death. But the Takata crisis once again re- minds us that this foundational piece of auto safety equipment has always carried the risk of injury—and death—riding shotgun. People have been hurt because they are the wrong size, shape or age to get the optimal benefit from a device first de- signed for an average male. And now, in Takata’s case, because of a defect.
How Did We Get Here? a n a ir bag in deploy ment h a s to fir st measure—and then counter—the considerable inertial forces that are brought to IMPACT Sensors in your car detect the pulse of impact as well as the position of occupants, sending signals to the electronic control unit in the middle of the car. An algorithm decides whether to deploy the air bags and at what force—full or partial power. DEPLOYMENT
Air-bag inflators are small metal containers that hold an igniter and a propellant. In a crash, the ignited propellant triggers a chemical reaction that produces nitrogen gas, which fills the bag rapidly. HOW AIR BAGS WORK THEY DEPLOY ONLY IN CERTAIN CRASH CONDITIONS.
IGNITER INFLATOR FOLDED AIR BAG NITROGEN GAS time December 15, in both cases. According to NHTSA, fron- tal air bags saved 2,213 lives in 2012, but seat belts saved 12,174 lives, more than five times as many. Keep in mind that 33,561 highway deaths were recorded in 2012. If you crash at a high speed and aren’t wear- ing a seat belt, having an air bag in the car is as useful as having a balloon. Can air bags get better?
“In my opinion, air-bag technology is mature. It has sort of done what it is supposed to do,†says Kent. There’s more promise in advances elsewhere. Electronic stability control, for instance, is reducing rollovers, which are particularly lethal. More advanced seat belts and sensors offer even more possibilities.
Paper For Above instruction
Air bags have been a vital component of vehicle safety systems since their inception, aiming to reduce fatalities and serious injuries in automotive accidents. Over the decades, technological advancements have enhanced their effectiveness, yet inherent risks and challenges remain. This paper explores the evolution of air bag technology, its safety benefits, associated hazards—particularly with defective inflators such as those produced by Takata—limitations in current testing standards, and prospects for future improvements.
The fundamental purpose of air bags is to serve as supplementary restraints that deploy rapidly during a collision to cushion occupants from severe impact forces. When a crash occurs, decreasing velocity is detected by impact sensors, which trigger the electronic control unit (ECU) to deploy the air bag. The deployment process involves a chemical reaction ignited within inflator canisters, often containing ammonium nitrate, which produce nitrogen gas to inflate the bag at speeds reaching up to 200 miles per hour. This rapid inflation is designed to provide a cushioning surface that distributes crash energy across a broader area, thereby minimizing injuries such as traumatic brain injuries or fractures.
The safety efficacy of airbags is well-documented; according to NHTSA, frontal airbags saved approximately 2,213 lives in 2012. However, this benefit is significantly augmented when combined with seat belts, which alone saved over 12,000 lives that year. Despite their life-saving role, airbags have been associated with injuries and deaths, especially in cases involving malfunctioning inflators or improper occupant positioning. Takata’s air bag recall exemplifies this risk, with ammonium nitrate propellants degrading over time, especially in humid environments, leading to accidental explosions that hurled metal
shards at occupants, causing injuries and fatalities. Investigations into these failures have prompted recalls of over 10 million vehicles across numerous manufacturers, exposing the vulnerabilities of current safety systems.
The historical development of air bags reveals periods of technological stagnation and setbacks. Originally introduced by General Motors in the 1970s, early systems featured dual-pressure controls designed to protect children from excessive forces. However, widespread adoption was delayed due to industry concerns about costs and skepticism over their effectiveness. It was only after regulatory mandates in the late 1990s that airbags became standard in new vehicles. Yet, early models demonstrated significant flaws, notably their inadequate safety for certain demographic groups such as the elderly, women, and children who often experienced more severe injuries upon deployment.
Current testing standards, primarily conducted at 35 miles per hour into rigid barriers, have been criticized for failing to represent real-world crash conditions. These tests predominantly utilize crash test dummies modeled after the 50th-percentile male, neglecting variations in size, age, and seating positions. Consequently, many occupants are "out of position" during actual crashes, increasing injury risk.
Additionally, the use of ammonium nitrate in inflators has raised concerns over instability and catastrophic failures, which have resulted in metal shards being propelled into vehicle cabins. Such incidents have underscored the essential need for improved inflator designs, alternative propellants, and more comprehensive testing protocols.
Looking ahead, technological innovation offers opportunities to enhance air bag safety and performance. Advances include smarter, multi-stage systems capable of deploying at varying intensities depending on crash severity and occupant characteristics. Integration with sensor technologies to determine occupant size, weight, and seating position can refine deployment strategies, minimizing injuries—especially among vulnerable populations such as the elderly or obese. For example, sensors could pre-tension seat belts and adjust air bag force accordingly, providing a tailored response to individual circumstances. Furthermore, the development of black-box data recorders and predictive crash algorithms could enable preemptive deployment, possibly activating airbags before impact occurs.
Additionally, alternative inflator technologies are being explored to replace ammonium nitrate-based systems. These include safer chemical propellants and tethers to limit the travel distance of deployed air bags, reducing the risk of projectile injuries. Transparency regarding inflator component sourcing and
manufacturing details is also advocated to foster public trust and accountability. As vehicle automation advances, the role of airbags will evolve, with self-driving cars potentially reducing crash frequency and severity, ultimately diminishing the reliance on passive safety devices.
In conclusion, while airbags have undeniably contributed to improved vehicle safety and reduction in fatalities, challenges related to their design, deployment reliability, and injury risks persist. Addressing these issues requires continued research and innovation, reforming testing standards to better reflect real-world conditions, and ensuring transparency in manufacturing processes. Future systems will likely become more adaptive, harnessing sophisticated sensor data and predictive analytics to provide optimal protection tailored to each occupant. Ultimately, a comprehensive approach integrating advanced technology, stricter regulatory oversight, and consumer awareness will be essential to maximizing the protective benefits of airbags while minimizing their associated risks.
References
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). (2012). Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS).
Fariello, M. (2014). Airbag Injuries: Causation & Federal Regulation. Journal of Automotive Safety. Takata Corporation. (2014). Safety recall information. Retrieved from https://www.takata.com/recalls Bloomberg. (2014). Takata’s air bag crisis causes global recalls. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com
United States Department of Transportation. (2017). Vehicle Safety Performance. NHTSA Annual Report.
Genthner, P., & van den Berg, H. (2018). Advances in automotive airbag technology. SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars — Mechanical Systems, 11(2), 125–134.
Scholz, B., & Guler, I. (2019). Failure analysis of Takata inflators: A material perspective. Materials Science & Engineering C, 99, 712–721.
Prasad, P., & Kent, R. (2020). Future directions in occupant safety systems. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 147, 105754.
United States Congress. (2015). Report on automotive safety recalls and inflator failures. Congressional Record.
Humanetics. (2021). Development of crash test dummies for diverse populations. Humanetics Publications.