Once again, the government is hard at work trying to protect the typical 165-pound male who declines to protect himself by buckling up. New rules proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will mean more sophisticated airbags and seat belts. And these devices will offer better protection for infants, children and adults of all sizes who are properly secured to the ton or so of metal, rubber, plastic and glass that conveys them through traffic at highway speeds, day in and day out.

Ironically, however, the better these new systems work, the less likely they will be to offer any protection to the unbelted adult in the situation the government is most concerned about: high-speed crashes. That's because the main purpose of all the new technology that will be required by the rule is the reduction of airbag-caused injuries and deaths. Which adults are most likely to be injured or killed by airbags’ The unbelted, particularly when they are thrown forward toward the instrument panel or steering wheel as the driver brakes in anticipation of impact - which happens in more than half of all accidents.

To protect unbelted adults who are too close to the airbag door - usually a hidden seam in the instrument panel or steering-wheel hub - the advanced systems will decide not to inflate the airbag. That will leave the unbelted adult exactly where he started before automakers installed the new technology: with neither seat belt nor airbag to protect him.

This is the major irony of airbags, true since the first installations in the 1970s: "The whole history of airbags has been unbelted occupants. We keep on relying on more sophisticated technology to compensate for behaviors," says Barry Felrice, director of regulatory affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based American Automobile Manufacturers' Association, which speaks for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Before he joined the AAMA in late 1997, Felrice served more than a decade as NHTSA associate administrator for safety standards.

The new technology, once known as smart airbags, most likely will begin appearing on significant numbers of 2003 models and will spread to all cars and trucks starting with 2005 models. Across the globe, automakers and their safety-system suppliers are hard at work wrestling with the challenge of transferring costly and complicated aerospace sensing and computing technology to the automobile affordably and reliably. The military and space program can afford to install high-tech electronic systems at $1 million a pop and then sit back to see whether they work. The auto industry must trim the cost to a few hundred dollars apiece while ensuring that a system that may be called on just once performs perfectly after sitting dormant in the harsh environment of an automobile for a decade or longer.

Meanwhile, the government and the auto industry will spend about 18 months hammering out the standards that will determine how advanced-airbag systems will work. NHTSA expected to issue a proposed advanced airbag rule in September 1998. Because the issue is so critical and so complicated, Congress allowed an extra six months for comment and debate before the final rule is issued. All parties involved fully expect to use that extra time. That means the final rule will likely come down in March 2000. Since it must allow automakers time to develop and test their systems, the rule probably will require them to start phasing in the new equipment beginning with 2003 models.

Horror and Hope

Historically, the government has always seen airbags as a protection, first and foremost, for unbelted adults; the auto and insurance industries, pediatric and trauma physicians' groups, and safety engineers have always asserted that airbags are an excellent supplement to seat belts. Yet both sides agree that the most important and effective safety component in any vehicle is the seat belt, cutting the chance of death in half. In addition to keeping people inside the vehicle, where they are much more likely to survive an impact, seat belts keep them from hitting the windshield, steering wheel and instrument panel. They protect people in front, rear and side crashes, while airbag protection is far more limited. And the seat belt keeps the driver in position so he can reach the steering wheel and pedals during and after the initial impact. Without a belt, a driver may be tossed out of reach of the controls while he still might have had a chance to steer out of harm’s way or brake, as when a car bounces off a roadside barrier and then begins to travel across traffic.

Similarly, no amount of technology can protect an infant or child as well as a properly secured child carrier or seat belt in the back seat. That will not change, no matter how sophisticated new airbag systems become.

But despite years of advertising campaigns, increasingly realistic crash-test footage, and seat-belt usage laws for adults in all but one state, a third of Americans still travel without the protection of a seat belt. People who don't buckle up themselves are dramatically less likely to secure their children and infants. A NHTSA study found that when the driver is buckled, 86 percent of toddlers age one to four are also buckled; when the driver is not buckled, only 23 percent of the toddlers riding with them are secured. The numbers are even worse for children older than four riding with a driver who doesn't wear a belt. The Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of private companies, government agencies and child health-and-safety organizations, recently found that 11 percent of parents still put babies in the front seat of vehicles with front airbags. In addition, disturbing proportion of the unbelted are teenagers, who already are at higher risk for single- and multi-car crashes.

Because of the high number of unbelted drivers and passengers, government airbag performance standards dating from the 1970s require that they protect an unbelted, 165-pound adult crash-test dummy in a 30-mph, head-on crash into a concrete barrier. This is the equivalent of a 60-mph crash on the highway, which is considered very severe. To meet that standard, engineers had to design airbags that inflate with great speed and force so they create a full cushion by the time the impact bounces the dummy toward the instrument panel, steering wheel or windshield. Such force and speed poses a danger to small children, infants, and adults, regardless of their size, who are too close to the instrument panel or steering wheel, as well as to the primary target, the unbelted adult.

"Everyone who was involved in this, back in the early '70s, knew of the potential of this happening to out-of-position occupants. The NHTSA rule in 1977 clearly said that any device, like an airbag, that has to stop a 165-pound test dummy in less than two feet and less than a fraction of a second has the potential to cause harm," Felrice says. "But it was thought that if it happened at all, it would be extremely rare. The actual frequency with which it happened was unexpected. All states have child-restraint laws; there were warnings in owners' manuals. But we were all unsuccessful in getting kids buckled up."

The result was horrifying. As factories churned out more and more cars with passenger-side front airbags during the 1990s children whose parents didn't properly secure their front-facing infant seats or didn't put their rear-facing infants seats in the back seat began dying. By the mid-February, 1997, airbag deployments had killed 38 children and 21 drivers. By July 1998, 63 children had died in crashes involving airbags; 13 were in infant seats the vehicle's front seat. According NHTSA, nearly every case involved an improperly positioned or unsecured infant or child.

So the government took two steps. For the short term, starting with 1997 models, it allowed automakers to reduce by a quarter to a third the force with which airbags deploy. For the long term, it looked to technology: the so-called smart airbag. Newspapers, magazines and television told consumers that by the magical turn of the millennium, aerospace-inspired airbag systems would be able to tell a rear-facing infant seat from a bag of groceries and decide whether and how to inflate accordingly, all in less time than it takes to blink an eye. These same systems would be able to tell whether an adult was too close to the airbag door, and they'd inflate a little or lot, quickly or slowly, depending on the size and weight of the person in the seat and the severity and location of the crash.

No Technology Before its Time

In North America, Europe and Asia, engineers are scrambling to develop the fool-proof sensors, super-smart computer brains, and variable inflators that will turn the smart-airbag dream into a practical, reliable reality. Some of the necessary technology does not yet exist; other solutions work well in the laboratory but aren't yet road-ready. In addition, automakers and suppliers need to know exactly what government standards will require in order to finish designing systems using already proven technology.

There are two issues industry and government most likely will haggle over during the 18-month comment period. The first is the design of the crash tests that actually make up the rule and determine how any airbag system will perform. NHTSA has proposed restoring the 30-mph frontal crash into a concrete barrier, which the AAMA and safety suppliers say forces them to design air bags they now believe are more powerful than necessary for any crash situation. The second is how quickly NHTSA will require the most cutting-edge elements of the system - those which sense the presence, weight, size, position, and nature of whatever occupies the protected seat.

Most suppliers see two separate and necessary phases to advanced-airbag development. First is production of dual-stage inflator systems, which include more-sophisticated crash-severity sensors, and airbag inflators with two settings, one that partially fills the cushion and one that fills it completely. These systems can also be set up to work with advanced seat belts, which include pretensioners to yank in slack in the webbing as soon as sensors (either in the belt retractor or as part of the airbag system) detect an impact, and force limiters, designed to tear the webbing after it has absorbed a set amount of force, in order to reduce pressure on the rib cage. Luxury models, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi vehicles, already are equipped with airbag systems that do not inflate the cushion in low-speed crashes if the person in the seat is belted.

Only later will automakers be able to install with confidence systems that can sense and make decisions about who or what is occupying each seat. Most already expect that the necessary level of accuracy and the speed of decision-making will require a combination of sensing technologies. In other words, to ensure that the system is not fooled by a bouquet of flowers, a newspaper, a bag of groceries or even a bald scalp, truly adaptive systems will need to include at least two, and very possibly three, different kinds of high-tech sensors all working constantly together.

Translation of sensor information into decisions and actions by the airbag system will require more complicated and powerful on-board computers and programming.

However, the NHTSA proposal would require automakers to install occupant-sensing technology from the beginning unless they can design airbags that will inflate without injuring unbelted or unsecured babies, children, small women, teens and other adults, as well as babies in rear-facing seats. Such airbag technology does not yet appear to exist, primarily because no matter what device automakers select to inflate the airbag, the bag must break through the steering wheel or instrument panel and inflate in a matter of milliseconds from initial sensing of the impact.

After the front-passenger airbag fiasco of the 1990s, consumers should be wary of any voice claiming auto companies or the government are dragging their feet. Instead, the longer the deliberation, the greater the chance that the advanced-airbag ruling will reflect technological reality over political expedience, and the less the chance that government will try to force technology before its time. Neither automakers nor government want to use consumers as guinea pigs in the real-life safety laboratory of street and highway.

In the meantime, consumers should keep in mind that it will be a decade or more beyond 2005 before all but the oldest cars on the road carry this technology. Even then, advanced-airbag systems likely will offer little additional protection for the unbelted adult; they will merely prevent airbag-induced injuries. Belted adults, on the other hand, will continue to enjoy the most protection now and as far ahead as engineers can see into the future. And no matter what combination of ultrasound, infrared, laser or electric-current sensing engineers concoct, children 12 and younger will always be safest when they are snugly secured in the back seat.

© 1998 AutoConnect L.L.C.