THE AIR BAGS ARE COMING. PART 1

Under a pending Department of Transportation (DOT) regulation, passive restraints for all front seat occupants will be required in all cars manufactured after 1 September 1983. Extensive excerpts are presented from a General Accounting Office (GAO) report (27 Jul 1979) on passive restraints. Specifically, the safety effects of air bags and the testing procedures used by DOT to arrive at the requirement are addressed. The DOT decision to mandate passive restraints was based on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) estimate of the life-saving and injury-prevention potential for such systems. This estimate was based on laboratory test results and engineering experience. NHTSA did not perform comprehensive comparative testing between active lap/shoulder belts and each passive restraint system. Most testing was on air bags rather than the automatic shoulder belt/knee bolster system. Test results support the safety potential of passive restraints in frontal collisions; the extent of this benefit and those of other crash modes was based mainly on subjective judgment. Test data on air bags in small cars are also lacking. Efforts are needed to evaluate passive restraint effectiveness in the real world; field data are too limited at the present time. GAO further believes that NHTSA failed to consider adequately the out-of-position occupant problem.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00952222
• Supplemental Notes:
  • See also HS-026 955. Part 2 is HS-029 164.
• Corporate Authors:

  Consumer's Research Incorporated

  517 Second Street NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20002
• Publication Date: 1980-5

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: p. 15-23
• Serial:
  • Consumers' Research
  • Volume: 63
  • Issue Number: 5
  • Publisher: Consumer's Research Incorporated
  • ISSN: 0095-2222

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air bags; Front seats; Frontal crashes; Laboratory tests; Regulations; Restraint systems
• Old TRIS Terms: Passenger restraints
• Subject Areas: Law; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00385630
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: HS-029 098
• Files: HSL, USDOT
• Created Date: Jun 28 1984 12:00AM