Evaluation of frontal air bag performance

Prasad, Aloke K.; Louden, Allison E.; Pack, Ron

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, US Department of Transportation

Abstract

In May of 2000, the NHTSA issued a Final Rule upgrading Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, 65 FR 30680. This advanced air bag rule specified significant changes in the frontal occupant protection requirements for light passenger vehicles (GVWR≤8500 lbs), to be phased in over several years. These included adding requirements for protecting small adult female occupants, adding requirements to minimize the risk of deploying air bags to out-of-position (OOP) children and small adult occupants, increasing the test speed for the belted 50th percentile male dummy, adding a rigid barrier test condition for the unbelted 50th percentile male test dummy and eliminating the unbelted sled test option.

In 2001, the agency initiated research to monitor the overall performance of advanced air bags. This paper updates the status of the research and presents results of the testing performed since the 18th ESV Conference. Results from static deployment tests for OOP occupants and dynamic crash tests are presented

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv19/05-0395-O.pdf

Cited Works (3)

Year	Entry
2003	Maltese MR, Prasad A, Beuse N, Hollowell WT. Vehicle performance in full-frontal crash tests with small female and mid-sized male occupants. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 19-22, 2003; Nagoya, Japan.
2001	Summers L, Hollowell WT, Prasad A. Analysis of occupant protection provided to 50th percentile male dummies sitting mid-track and 5th percentile female dummies sitting full-forward in crash tests of paired vehicles with redesigned air bag systems. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 4-7, 2001; Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
2003	Prasad A, Maltese M, Louden A. Injury risks from advanced air bags in frontal static out-of-position tests. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 19-22, 2003; Nagoya, Japan.

Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2021	Parenteau CS, Courtney A, Campbell IC, Lau E. An update on front-seat occupant injury rates in frontal crashes: focus on modern vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 2021 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 8-10, 2021; Online.394-430.