Airbag Safety
In the past 30 years, cars have more than triple and with that means more car accidents. Amazingly though, with technology the number of car accidents have increased however the number of deaths has decreased by more than half. Thanks in large part with seatbelt restraints, shoulder harnesses, head restraints and the airbag. The idea of the airbag seems simple enough but this is a sophisticated mechanism. At the moment of collision, the airbag has only fifty thousandths 50/1000ths of a second to inflate and stop the driver from hitting the steering wheel and windshield. That is one quarter ¼ of the time it takes a humming birds wing to beat once! Thanks to airbags it has reduced fatalities of seat belt wearers by 25%.
But how do these nylon airbags inflate at such a speed?
The secret is to have a bomb in your car or more specifically, in your steering wheel. The bomb
really is a bomb; the blast is controlled by high explosives that are packed in the form of pellets. The
force of the blast pushes air into the bag at incredible speeds.
How does the airbag know when to go off?
There are sensors located in the front of the car behind the front lights. These sensors are
located approximately 10 centimeters inward, in the event of a crash; these sensors
relay the information to a central control box inside the car. From there, the central control
box sends a signal to the steering wheel and the compartment in front of the front seat passenger,
where a nylon airbag is folded and contained into a housing device. When this sensor goes off, you
have deployment of these bags in a fraction of a second. But even when the sensors deploy the airbags,
there is another problem; the airbags are housed in plastic.
How is it that this explosion doesn't cause potential lethal chards of
plastic to be blown around the car, killing or maiming passengers?
The ingenious solution is it is only visible to the eye with a movie camera at 1,000 frames
per second. Each airbag compartment has a front section that is weakened by a series of minute
holes to small to be seen. This weakened casing then ruptures allowing the airbag to squeeze
through while staying in one piece and the airbag then expands, ensuring that the plastic stays
in place. As fast as the airbag is deployed, it has ventilation holes that allow the airbag to
deflate rapidly to save the driver from head and neck injuries. Airbags are not designed, as some
believe, to deploy above a certain crash speed.
Each airbag is tested by a Cyborg crash dummy costing up to $250,000 each. There are numerous
wires and sensors within the Cyborg acting as organs, muscles and even arteries and veins
like that of a human.
Once an airbag has been deployed it cannot be used again. The real dangers are that the
airbags that are installed may not be the correct model and may not function properly when
you really need them.
Special risk drivers who sit very close to the steering wheel, such as the elderly or those small in stature-pose a special problem to higher incidents of injury. In a few cases, the airbags have deployed and struck the occupant at full deployment speed. This can cause a very severe hyperextension injury, and several deaths have resulted from deployments during fairly low speed collisions.
Carlsbad Chiropractic
2808 Roosevelt St. #102
Carlsbad, CA 92008
760-720-CARE (2273)
Fax: 760-730-9911
Office Hours:
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Tues: closed
Open the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month
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