The Danger of Air Bags and the Proposed Improvements including Advanced Air Bag Systems Introduction to Air Bags In today's fast paced world, the amount of automobile travel increases more and more each year. With this increase in travel, there has been a much larger demand for safety in automobiles, and this includes air bags and other restraint systems. To put the use of airbags in perspective, since their mandate in the late 1980's until now, 2.25 million driver-side air bags have deployed saving approximately 3,000 drivers. (www.nhtsa.dot.gov/airbags/). This number was calculated by a mathematical analysis of real-world fatality experience of vehicles with air bags in comparison to those that do not have air bags. Based upon the same report, passenger side air bags have saved approximately 500 lives in 344,000 deployments. This report had a total figure of 3,448 lives saved (965 belted, 2,483 unbelted). (www.nhtsa.dot.gov/airbags/) Another report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported some slightly higher numbers than that of the National Highway Travel Safety Association.
Lives saved by seat belts and airbags
English: OH-58D Kiowa Cockpit Air Bag System (CABS...
AirbagThis report goes on to say that driver airbags have been deployed in over 3.3 million automobile crashes and more than 660,000 passenger airbags have deployed while the front seat was occupied (www.highwaysafety.org/safety_facts/airbags/stats.html).
Air Bag Death Statistics Based on a NHTSA report from September 1st, 1998, 53.0 million cars, or about 42 percent of all cars on the road, are equipped with some form of air bag protection. With the amount of cars on the road with air bags, the NHTSA reports only 113 confirmed air bag deaths. (www.nhtsa.dot.gov/airbags/). This number seems to be a tad "sugar-coated" if you will considering that the number given by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety lists 141 deaths since 1990 alone. These numbers are still not a great indicator of the...