Auto Firms Call Crash Test Plan Too Tough
The nation’s three largest auto makers say their latest, less forceful air bags--designed to reduce injuries to small adults and children--cannot pass a proposed government crash test standard that the companies say is too tough.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposes reinstating a crash test standard that requires an air bag to cushion an unbelted dummy when a vehicle is driven into a wall at 30 mph.
Federal safety officials believe reinstating the old test standard will make air bags more effective and safer for unbelted adults in high-speed or severe crashes.
But the auto makers argue that, to meet the 30-mph test, air bags will have to be made more powerful again, which would increase the chances that children and short adults will suffer injuries.
Air bags have been blamed for 135 deaths--mostly of children and shorter women--in low-speed accidents that the victims should have survived, according to government statistics.
General Motors Corp. officials said Thursday that they ran the 30-mph test and the newer, less powerful air bag failed to adequately cushion the unbelted crash dummy. A Ford Motor Co. official said the company performed similar tests with the same result, while DaimlerChrysler has said for months that its less powerful air bags on Chrysler and Dodge vehicles could fail the proposed standard. Last year, all three auto makers installed air bags with 25% to 35% less force.
The agency’s proposed 30-mph unbelted test “would simply take us back to where we were before, and we know we don’t like that outcome,” said Bob Lange, GM’s director of engineering safety.
“If we add too much energy [to the air bag], we create the potential to severely injure people who would have been essentially injury-free,” Lange said.
The government is not convinced that auto makers need to add more power to air bags to comply with the test, which was a government standard until late 1997.
Auto makers currently must comply with a 30-mph vehicle crash test using dummies wearing seat belts, a test they agree is necessary.
