Frontal Air Bags

• During moderate to severe frontal crashes, frontal air bags inflate to prevent occupants from hitting the interior of the vehicle.
   
• Frontal air bags do not eliminate the need for safety belts.
   
• Occupants who are unbelted or out of position can be seriously injured or killed if they are too close to the air bag module when it deploys.
   
• Frontal air bags typically do not offer protection in rollovers, side-impact or rear-end crashes.
   
• Frontal air bags, either 1st or 2nd generation, also known as "depowered" air bags, have been standard equipment in all passenger cars since model year 1998 and all SUVs, pickup trucks and vans since model year 1999.
   
• Advanced frontal air bags, or 3rd generation, are being phased into new model year 2004 vehicles. All light vehicles will have advanced frontal air bags by model year 2007.

Air Bag Safety

Airbags are fitted to cars to protect the driver and in some cases the front-seat passenger during frontal and front-angled collisions.

Airbags are most effective when used in conjunction with seatbelts, and are designed to reduce injuries to the upper body and face by helping to stop you being thrown against the windscreen, steering wheel and other hard surfaces during an accident. However, they don't protect you in roll-over, rear, side or low-speed collisions, although some car manufacturers, such as Volvo, are fitting side-impact airbag systems to some of their models.

 

Not all accidents are severe enough to trigger an airbag.

This is just as well, since the seatbelt should provide adequate protection in low-speed collisions, and replacing your airbag can be expensive. Airbag systems for the Australian market tend to be designed to act in higher-speed accidents than those made for the US market, where seatbelt usage is much lower than in Australia.

Airbags can cause injury

Airbags inflate in a fraction of a second and with great force. This means that if the front-seat occupants of the car are not properly seated and strapped in with seatbelts or are obstructing an airbag compartment with part of their body, they may be injured. There have been reports in the US of children sitting in the front seat or lying in a rear-facing child restraint mounted in the front seat being crushed to death by airbags in low-speed accidents, which they might have otherwise survived.

According to the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, it is common practice to carry small children in the front seat in the US and Europe. In Australia they're generally in the back because our child restraints usually can't be fitted in the front seat. As long as this doesn't change we shouldn't have the same problem with children being injured, they say.

However, Australian adults still need to be cautious - there have been reports in the US of airbags causing bruises, broken arms, eye damage and adult fatalities.

But they do save lives Despite the occasional problems, airbags in most cases do prevent serious injury and save lives. For example, General Motors Holden says there has been a 'dramatic' reduction in facial, head and chest injuries to occupants of airbag-equipped Commodores involved in accidents.

The US-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has also compared driver deaths in airbag-equipped cars to cars without airbags. The research found there were 23% fewer deaths in airbag-equipped cars involved in frontal and front-angled crashes.

 

There are ways to make your airbag as safe as possible:

Airbags are a secondary safety device, which means they’re designed to reduce injuries once a crash is happening. (Primary safety devices, such as brakes, steering and anti-lock braking, are designed to help you avoid having an accident in the first place - obviously a preferable option.)

While airbags can sometimes cause injury, they do save lives, and there are ways of minimising the risk of injury.

General safety
 

• All occupants of the car should wear a seatbelt, irrespective of whether the car is fitted with airbags.
• Avoid sitting too close to the airbag compartment, and don’t obstruct it with any part of your body. Airbags inflate with great force and could seriously injure you if you sit too close. This means drivers shouldn’t hunch over the steering wheel, and passengers shouldn’t lean or put their feet up on the dashboard.
• Don’t cover the airbag compartment or place any objects between you and the airbag, including dashboard covers.
• Any maintenance or repair work on the electrical system, steering column, dashboard area, steering wheel or airbag system are best carried out by an authorised repair person. If you’re a ‘do- it - yourselfer  contact the manufacturer to find out whether you need to disable the airbag in order to carry out repairs -- though if you’re not competent with airbags, the best advice is don’t touch them.
• Fitting a bullbar or making some other modification to the front of the car could change the impact speed which triggers the airbag, reducing its effectiveness - check with the manufacturer before doing so.
• If you’re in a low-speed accident, don’t be surprised if the airbag doesn’t go off. In most cases it simply means the accident wasn’t serious enough for the airbag to deploy.
   

Children and airbags

• Children should sit in the back set of a car and use a seatbelt or child restraint. Where the front seat has to be used, it should be moved as far back as possible from the airbag.
• Never fit a rear-facing child restraint to the front passenger seat. In fact, it’s always better to install a child restraint of any type in the rear seat