Seatbelts Are Not Enough: a Look at Airbag Safety
Not many people realise that the concept of the air bag – a soft buffer to land against in a smash – has been around for many years. The very first patent on an air bag for air planes was filed during World War 2. During the 80s, the first commercial airbags were present in vehicles.
Up to the present day, statistics show that airbags reduce the chance of death in a square anterior smash by around thirty percent. These days there are also door mounted side and seat-mounted air bags. Incredibly, some automobiles go far beyond simply having dual airbags, and alternatively have six to eight airbags.
The purpose of an airbag is to decelerate the passenger’s forward movement as smoothly as possible in just a split second. There are three parts to an airbag that help accomplish this goal:
- The airbag itself is made of a slim, nylon fabric, which is folded into the dashboard or steering wheel and, more recently, the seat or door
- The detector is the gadget that tells the bag to inflate. Inflation takes place when there is a crash force equal to motoring into a brick wall at around 24 km an hour. A mechanical switch is thrown when there’s a weight movement that closes an electrical contact, instructing the sensors that a crash has happened. The detectors get information from an accelerometer built into a micro chip
- The airbag’s ballooning facility melds sodium azide with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to develop nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the nitrogen expand the air bag
Because of the incredibly fast inflation of an airbag, it’s crucial the passenger and driver sit in the seat with a straight back providing a safe space between their face and the dashboard / steering wheel – this sets aside time for the airbag to balloon while they are being pushed forwards by the shock of the smash.
