A study of the safety performance of production vehicles equipped with driver air bags in the NHTSA test programs

Hollowell, William T.; Frey, Fabienne J.

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Abstract

In issuing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, “Occupant Crash Protection.” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has encouraged the installation of driver air bags with its provision that each car manufactured with these devices would be counted as one unit toward the manufacturer’s calculation of its phase-in requirements. With this incentive, a number of manufacturers have installed driver air bags in selected vehicles in their productions lines. The consumer acceptance and preference for air bags have prompted the manufacturers to quickly expand the availability of air bags over many car lines. In its crash testing programs, the NHTSA has conducted tests in which a variety of occupant restraint conditions are available. The restraint conditions include the belt systems (three point and two point systems), the air bag system, and combined belt/air bag systems. This paper presents an analysis of the safety performance for vehicles equipped with these various restraint conditions from the crash test results obtained in the FMVSS No. 208 compliance test program and from the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). Additionally, a summary is presented of the results obtained from a test program of static deployments of selected production driver air bag systems.

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Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
1994	Sugimoto T, Shindo T, Reed M. Laboratory assessment of the potential for airbag-induced skin abrasion. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 23-26, 1994; Munich, Germany.689-697.