New air bag set for Sept

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 14, 1998 | by Peter Kaplan

After typical bureaucratic misdirection, the feds will rewrite automobile-safety rules so carmakers can introduce roof-mounted air bags that prevent head injuries during crashes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, has cleared the way for new "head" air bags. The new safety devices, which typically inflate across a car's side windows from the roof and roof pillars, are smaller and less explosive than the frontal air bags that are deployed from a steering column or dashboard. Government-mandated frontal air bags have saved thousands of lives since they were introduced in the early 1990s, but their powerful punch also has killed or injured scores of children and small adults.

Experts says there's no downside to head air bags. They are designed to cushion the blow of a side impact, fend off outside objects and keep an occupant's head inside the car during a crash. They will stay inflated for the duration of a rollover, at least six seconds.

"A lot of the head injuries from side impact are when the head hits something that had been outside the car--a tree or a pole" says Brian O'Neill, director of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "These kinds of technologies begin to address that."

Even though head air bags received high marks, carmakers were facing the "crazy" prospect that the devices would be out of compliance with federal safety standards, explains O'Neill.

NHTSA, which has been working on the head-safety requirements since the 1980s, had ordered manufacturers to outfit cars with padding that would cushion the head during a side impact. The regulations didn't allow for an inflatable bag. "It didn't make sense" says Rob Mitchell, a spokesman for German automaker BMW of North America. "The system was already on the market and had already been tested" Head-protection standards will be expanded Sept. 1 so the new air bags will be in compliance.

"These advanced head-protection system technologies go beyond the [extra padding ordered] just three years ago -- and they work in realworld crashes," says Ricardo Martinez, director of NHTSA.

NHTSA estimates that about 2,400 people a year are killed and another 60,000 injured in crashes that cause their heads to slam against their cars' interiors. Car rollovers kill about 7,700 people a year, and another 9,200 are seriously injured after being ejected through side windows.

BMW introduced head air bags last year, and one car owner in Texas already has reported that they saved her life and that of her son during a crash, according to Mitchell. The automaker plans to feature her story in an advertising campaign scheduled to debut this fall. Volvo and Daimler-Benz also will offer head air bags in 1999 models. "In a year or two, it'll start to spread into the mainstream car products," says O'Neill. The new devices will add $300 to $400 to the price of a car.