DaimlerChrysler Air-Bag System Under Scrutiny
Federal safety regulators disclosed Monday that they are probing air bags in DaimlerChrysler minivans after one deployed in a crash test with enough force to cause potentially fatal neck injuries to an occupant.
The inflating air bag in a 1997 Dodge Caravan hit a female-sized adult dummy, seated in the front passenger seat, under the chin with enough force to cause “a high probability of serious injury or death,” according to a report released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
William Hollowell, chief of the agency’s crash-worthiness division, said the air-bag injury was “an unexpected result” of a frontal crash test conducted in July and designed to study vehicle compatibility.
DaimlerChrysler said it will cooperate in the regulatory inquiry but harshly criticized NHTSA for publicly releasing the data at a news conference here without first giving the company an opportunity to evaluate it.
“We also are outraged NHTSA has taken eight months to release this data,” said spokeswoman Sheila Gruber McLean.
News of the probe is troublesome to DaimlerChrysler, the world’s dominant seller of minivans, a favorite vehicle of many U.S. families. About 1 million 1996 and 1997 Caravans, Plymouth Voyagers and Chrysler Town and Country vans are equipped with the air-bag system in question.
NHTSA is not launching a formal investigation at this point but is undertaking what it termed a “research effort to evaluate more thoroughly the performance of the Chrysler air-bag system.” This includes laboratory studies on the interactions of the air bag and crash-test dummy as well as analysis by the agency’s special crash investigations unit, Hollowell said.
The initial evaluation should be completed by this summer. NHTSA could then decide whether to launch a formal defect investigation, potentially leading to a recall, or drop the matter without taking any action.
DaimlerChrysler minivans are already the subject of another NHTSA investigation regarding the inadvertent deployment of air bags in non-crash situations.
The federal government is currently considering new rules to make air bags safer. More than 122 people, include 68 children, have been killed by deploying air bags this decade.
Auto makers have been installing less forceful air bags in the last two years to minimize the danger of injuries to children and small adults. DaimlerChrysler said its 1998 and 1999 minivan models use such a newer, less forceful air-bag unit.
The latest air-bag probe stems from the government’s ongoing vehicle-compatibility study. Regulators are trying to determine if the greater weight, ride height and frame rigidity of light trucks--minivans, sport-utility vehicles and pickups--present a growing hazard to smaller cars in crashes.
The most recent round of compatibility crash tests, presented Monday at the Society of Automotive Engineers annual conference, studied frontal collisions involving a 1997 Honda Accord and four “striking” vehicles: a 1998 Chevrolet S-10 pickup, a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina mid-size sedan, a 1997 Dodge Caravan and a 1997 Ford Explorer SUV.
The colliding vehicles were each traveling at 35 mph and made contact at an oblique angle, with the striking vehicle hitting the left front corner of the Accord.
Except for the collision involving the Caravan, there were no serious injuries recorded in dummies in the striking vehicles. As a result of the air-bag deploying, the female-size passenger dummy in the Caravan received a blow to the head with force three times greater than the threshold at which the government says serious injury is caused.
The compatibility crash test results released Monday also found that the Caravan and Explorer caused potentially serious chest injuries to front-passenger female dummies in the Accord. The two striking vehicles were the heaviest tested.
NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez said the compatibility frontal crash tests were consistent with earlier side-impact tests and with analysis of data involving more than 40,000 crashes.
“Our research has helped us understand that weight--or mass--alone is not the sole reason for vehicle aggressivity,” he said in a statement. “Two other factors--geometry and stiffness--also contribute.”
Federal accident records indicate that although light trucks make up only about one-third of the vehicles on the road, they account for half the fatalities in crashes involving more than one vehicle.
