In light vehicle crashes, over half of the serious injuries are accompanied by occupant compartment intrusions. Stronger occupant compartments can decrease the crash intrusions, but will also expose the occupants to higher compartment accelerations. A longer crush zone, for example by an extended bumper system, can decrease both intrusion and compartment acceleration. The hydraulic front bumper system, initially developed in 1957 by Professor James Ryan of the University of Minnesota, was designed to extend 0.43 meters when the car reached 32 km/h, and absorb a 50 km/h barrier crash without significant vehicle or dummy damage. This paper will review the history of extended bumper designs, including the bumpers of the world-wide experimental safety vehicles, and the additional compatibility need of the larger vehicle to have the more yielding bumper. An airbag bumper design will be presented, with airbags on the front, sides, and rear, extended 0.6 meters in the front, or 0.3 meters in the sides or rear, in the appropriate direction when a threat is sensed by near-field radar. In addition, airbags would inflate on each side of the roof when a rollover is sensed, whose crush will reduce the rollover energy. Compartmented airbags, with a low pressure deep airbag against the car and a rigid (high pressure) bumper face covered by a pedestrian soft face for the front bumper, are used. Preliminary manned crash tests of a prototype airbag bumper system using a swing crash simulator were carried out to a delta V of 42 km/h. Crush of these airbags would leave the crush of other vehicle structures outside of the occupant compartment to provide survivable crashes at higher speeds.