Pumping Up the Air Bag

Americans have taken air bags to their bosoms. Also to their heads and other upper-body parts that were once the first to bash against steering wheels and windshields in front-end crashes.

A study for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that there are 28% fewer fatalities in cars equipped with air bags. There’s also a 29% reduction in injuries and a 24% drop in hospital time.

Institute spokesman George Hurley says that by the end of 1994, almost all new cars in the United States will have passenger- and driver-side air bags: “When in all cars, and with 100% seat-belt use, we expect air bags to save between 9,000 and 12,000 lives a year.”

Other stats: Of 145 million cars on American roads, 6 million have air bags. There have been 50,000 deployments, and of the 194 burns and abrasions caused by inflation, only 2 cases required hospital treatment.

Hurley cautions that the device is no panacea. It only lessens the violence of head-on collisions. So, there have been lawsuits against auto makers after drivers died in cars equipped with air bags.

One crash was so severe that the driver’s head was pinned between the steering wheel and headrest. It took rescuers half an hour to release him. In another, the closing speed between a compact car and a truck was 95 m.p.h.

“Some accidents are simply non-survivable,” Hurley notes. “Air bags don’t levitate you away from the crash. But they do a remarkable job in preventing damage to your hard-to-replace items. Like heads and faces.”