As a step toward eventual quantity production of cars equipped with passive restraint systems, General Motors built 1000 cars identical in all controllable respects and equipped with air cushion restraint systems. These cars were placed in high mileage fleets where they would be exposed to a variety of operating conditions.

In about a year of operation and over 19 million miles of fleet experience, the air cushion has operated as it was intended to in nine impacts of the type and severity to cause cushion deployment and in over 230 non-deployment accidents. One inadvertent actuation has occurred.

This sample of real-life operation is too small to establish reliability of the passive restraint system, but enough information has been acquired to make feasible a limited offering of the system as an option to the general public.