- Q: Does anyone have experience of a high speed ~90 -95 mph frontal impact in which the front seat occupants may have been already been in very close proximity to the steering wheel and/or dashboard when the airbags fired?.
eg speed high enough to be fatal despite airbags, airbag injury itself greater, any other insight/advice?
- DeltaV is important
- impact speed alone, unless into a wall that doesn't break, is insufficient to gauge impact severity
- 1970s First made/designed the airbag for the unbelted occupants
- to accommodate folks not using or refusing to use seat belts and/or before seat belt laws enacted
- 1990 Airbags thrown into cars as sales safety pitch BEFORE any seat belt laws
- thanks Lee** (see footnote below!)
- Also see Seat belt laws in the United States
Which includes a Federal law in 1983 with NO TEETH
Thew law left enforcement to the states and most states ignored the law until the 1990s
- Also see Seat belt laws in the United States
- thanks Lee** (see footnote below!)
- 1990-1998 Airbags were then causing problems in lower speed collisions (deaths).
- Investigations found that folks in close proximity to steering wheel/dash (shorter people), and unbelted people, were being killed EVEN IN LOW SPEED COLLISIONS.
- In many crashes due to pre-impact braking, the driver and passenger, if unbelted (or with belts without pre-tensioners) would move into close proximity to the steering wheel and/or dashboard (aka airbag deployment surface) when the bag deploys.
- Airbag inflation rate is quite high. Airbags MUST inflate to 10-12 inches in 30 to 50 milliseconds which can mean
(from this 2014 Time magazine article and others):- air bags explode (expand) at speeds of 200 MPH for 12 to 18 inches. This is a violent reaction, necessary to have the bag deployed and beginning to slowly deflate when the occupant contacts the bag.
- Side note:
- The threshold for deployment of the airbag was originally set in the 1970s at 9 MPH to 14 MPH
- That was because folks didn't use seatbelts and it was to prevent issues with contact with the steering wheel.
- WHY? when there are seatbelt laws and folks use them and they are very effective at 8 MPH to 14 MPH and above!
Why not raise it to 20 MPH or so when it is needed, NOT a lower speeds where what would be a fender bender now destroys the dashboard!
- The threshold for deployment of the airbag was originally set in the 1970s at 9 MPH to 14 MPH
- Investigations found that folks in close proximity to steering wheel/dash (shorter people), and unbelted people, were being killed EVEN IN LOW SPEED COLLISIONS.
- 1998 they added dual stage airbags AND an interlink with seatbelt use so less possibility of fatality in lower speed impacts
- if they were unbelted then the bag (obviously depending on make/model/year/design) might have deployed at secondary rate
- the probably high severity (DELTAV) combined with no seatbelt use combined with lower deployment rate
The probability of fatality=very high
- always a chance (however small) of survival
It is amazing the variations in human responses to catastrophic events.
Footnote:
- in 1983 Iococca said:
- "I'm so tired of talking about air bags ... the last 20 years, I don't know what to say anymore." In his autobiography, Iacocca summed up the standard criticisms -- that people will think they can replace using seat belts, that they don't work well by themselves, that they're dangerous because they can inflate when they shouldn't or not inflate when they should.
- Announcing a year ago in June that Chrysler would install air bags in all its 1990 models, he stated in a two-page newspaper ad: "You can teach an old dog new tricks ... You won't hear any more beefs about air bags from me."