As technology gets smarter, death by airbag toll nears zero

Death by airbag is nearly a thing of the past.

No adults and two children died from airbag-induced injuries in the United States in 2005, according to the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash statistics. The reduction of airbag-related deaths to near zero means that the industry's efforts to improve the safety of airbags have paid off.

To date, NHTSA estimates that airbags have saved 18,913 lives. Deaths resulting from injuries inflicted by deploying airbags peaked in 1997, when 53 people died, including 31 children. Altogether, 264 people have been killed because of injuries attributed to airbags, which became common in vehicles in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The ensuing rash of deaths and injuries from airbag deployments persuaded federal safety regulators to rewrite safety rules. Congress passed safety legislation in 1997 to enhance airbag performance standards by requiring safety testing with a family of dummies.

Manufacturers responded with a new generation of lower-powered airbags, designed to deploy with less force and thus cause fewer deaths and injuries. Deaths have been declining ever since.

"Smart airbags could partly explain that, along with other changes introduced at the same time," said Jan Olsson, vice president of research at Autoliv Inc., the world's largest airbag supplier. Autoliv is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Advanced frontal airbag technologies vary. Bags are basically designed to deploy with varying strength depending on the size and location of vehicle occupants and whether those occupants are wearing seat belts. Sensors determine the power of deployment.

NHTSA statistics show vehicles from recent model years cause few, if any, deaths from airbags. No deaths were reported from the 2002 and 2003 model years. One death was reported from the 2004 model year. Despite the new evidence, safety watchdogs say they still don't know what share of the credit advanced airbags can take for the big reduction in deaths and injuries.

Among those factors: more people now wear seat belts, and more children and infants are being put in the back seat.
The evolution continues
But controversy clings to airbags. Critics contend that even the newest airbags still are capable of inflicting injuries. They say more could be done to make airbags safer.

Leonard Evans, a retired General Motors safety researcher and a vocal critic of U.S. safety policy, says the industry has spent vast amounts of money improving airbags in exchange for "microscopic" safety benefits. Lower-power airbags haven't changed his view.

Evans contends that airbags should be a matter of choice, not a government mandate."When you start depowering to reduce the lethality of that forward motion, you're also compromising the performance," he says. "Engineering judgment would say if you're going to suck power out, you suck some of the effectiveness out."

To find out how well the new airbags are working, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Blue Ribbon Panel for Advanced Technology Airbags has appointed a researcher to analyze crash data to isolate the performance of so-called advanced airbags. Elisa Braver of the National Study Center for Trauma and EMS, at the University of Maryland's medical school, will analyze the performance of these airbags in crashes.

Says Susan Ferguson, chairwoman of the panel: "We're concerned because there's a lot of new technology out there. We want to be sure airbags are still as effective as they were and that there's not some unexpected downside." <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=490 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 10px">

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=490 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=black_11 style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 2px"><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=grey_10 style="PADDING-LEFT: 15px">MICHAEL BROWNING/AP WIDE WORLD PHOTO</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>The driver of this car, whose airbags deployed when it hit the bus head-on, escaped with minor injuries, as did the bus driver. No children were on board. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Injuries still occur
Among those downsides may be an increase in certain types of injuries.

"The numbers of deaths and serious injuries have decreased because of depowering, all except hand and arm injuries," says Bill Smock, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Louisville Hospital and Trauma Center. Smock specializes in studying airbag-induced injuries when crash victims come to the trauma center.

Smock says the worst airbag-induced arm injury he ever saw was that of an elderly woman in Louisville, Ky. Her arm was fractured in 36 places by a first-generation airbag, the kind that deployed from the steering wheel at nearly 200 mph. The airbag also ripped the skin off the woman's arm, which subsequently had to be amputated.

Smock doesn't see as many of those kinds of serious injuries now. He says airbags have saved many lives, but he contends they still could be safer.

Smock says the instinctive behavior of motorists in an accident can put them in harm's way.

"If you're blowing your horn and have the horn button on the module cover, that would increase the risk of hand or wrist injuries. If you're going to brace for impact, where do you put your hand? Usually on the dashboard. You end up having these massive injuries to the wrists, fingers and forearms."

Stefan Dumas, director for the Center of Injury Biomechanics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., says the nature of injuries has changed. "Certainly with depowered airbags you can still get severe injuries. With regular airbags, you saw forearm fractures. With depowered airbags, there's a decrease in fractures but an increase in dislocations. We're seeing more elbow and shoulder dislocations."

Smock believes the deployment threshold could be increased.

But Robert Strassburger, vice president for vehicle safety at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says the deployment threshold isn't the issue: "What we really need are better sensors that are better able to sense whether there is a crash and tell the airbag as early as possible when it should deploy."

Smock believes a simple warning could help prevent the hand and arm injuries. He has written a proposed warning label that would warn drivers and passengers to keep their hands away from the horn and the dashboard in a crash.

Virginia Tech's Dumas isn't sure that would work.

"There's this compromise of human factors. People like to honk the horn by pushing on the middle. It's a lot more effort and expense to put it there, but consumers demanded it. The whole vehicle is a compromise between safety and what humans demand."
Airbag timeline
Early 1950s

Early airbag patents submitted

1968

Allen Breed invents world's first electromechanical airbag system

1971

Ford builds experimental airbag fleet

1972

1973 Oldsmobile Toronado offered with driver's-side airbag

1988

Chrysler becomes first carmaker to offer airbags as standard equipment after Lee Iacocca reverses his opinion on them

1990

First fatality attributed to an airbag

1994

TRW produces first gas-inflated airbag

1997

Deaths caused by airbags peak at 53

1998

Congress votes to require all vehicles to have driver and passenger airbags. Side-curtain airbags, patented by Autoliv, are installed in Volvo S80 and Mercedes-Benz C class

2005

Dual-depth airbags begin appearing in some domestic vehicles, including 2006 Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS

Source: Companies, news reports, Automotive News research
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