Should Automotive Airbags Be Passive or Active Restraint Systems?

Should Automotive Airbags Be Passive or Active Restraint Systems?

Sherman N. Miller

12/19/1996

During my tenure at the Du Pont Company I got to work on the development of the fabric used in the automobile airbag system. I visited General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to share our technical results and to learn about their automobile crash and sled tests. This experience forced me to ask, "Is the present demonization of the automobile airbag safety system a classic case of being judged guilty without the jury really understanding the evidence?"

In the late Nineteen Sixties I almost lost my life in a head-on collision. I worked for the Chrysler Corporation in Newark, DE (New Castle County) and I lived in Dover, DE (Kent County). Sometimes, it snowed in New Castle County but not in Kent County. One morning around 5:30 a.m., I was commuting to work when I rounded a curve at roughly 50 miles per hour in New Castle County and suddenly hit snow.

I always drove with a pillow in the middle of my steering wheel because there were no shoulder harnesses on my seat belts in those days. I had taken many college physics courses, so I knew what would happen if I hit the steering wheel in an accident. When I tried to slow down by tapping the brake, my car skidded into a telephone pole because I was on an ice patch.

I saw steam seemingly coming from everywhere and telephone wires dancing in my window. I was frantically trying to get the seat belt unbuckled since the picture of a fire explosion scene on a television show from the night before was now haunting me. Somehow I got out of the car and fully regained my senses only when I was being put into an ambulance.

I walked away from this accident without any cuts and bruises. But it left me with a passion for automobile safety equipment. Thus, it was a privilege to work on both airbags and seat belts during my Du Pont tenure.

As I understood the design of airbags, we were trying to prevent death and serious injury in frontal collisions. We attempted to provide protection for people who would not wear their seat belts.

We could not protect people in roll overs, side collisions and rear end collisions. We also had serious concern about the so-called "standing child" problem (where parents allowed their child to stand on the front seat and the bag might knock this kid out of the back window.)

Child restraint laws helped to address the standing child problem, but the system works by a bag full of gas coming out in milliseconds to act as a pillow for whatever average man or average woman hits it. Thus, children need to stay in the back seat in airbag equipped cars unless the airbag is turned off because to them this adult pillow may become like a stone that can do serious harm.

Let us turn our attention to the unborn child for a moment. Now consider that a four pound fetus suddenly turns into a hundred plus pound ball in a forty miles per hour head on collision with an abutment, according to a college professor I asked to make an estimate for me. That is like imagining a woman with a hundred pound bowling ball inside of her body moving at forty miles per hour trying to push its way out through the wall of her gut when the car came to a sudden stop in less time than the blink of an eye.

The real issue underpinning the current airbag hiatus is, are we using safety equipment properly? I warned people about putting metal plates in their back windows because these things are missiles in an accident. I shiver at seeing these little king's crowns in car back windows because I am reminded of films of crashes at the General Motors Proving Ground that showed how flying objects in an accident are injurious or deadly to car occupants.

Surely we can alter the design premise of the airbag away from being a passive restraint system to allow the car owner to decide what safety equipment is suitable for his or her lifestyle. This method permits the owner to cut off the airbag with children in the front seat and use seat belt restraints in accordance with mandatory child restraint laws in many states. Perhaps this thinking will keep us from tinkering with the airbag design and wind up killing folks weighing over 250 pounds to save those weighing under 30 pounds.