On the Role Airbags Play in Car Safety
Not many people know that the concept of air bags - a soft buffer to impact against in a smash - has been around for decades. The first patent on an air bag for airplanes was submitted during World War Two. In the 1980s, the first commercial airbags were a safety feature in automobiles.
To date, statistics indicate that airbags cut the possibility of dying in a straight anterior smash by around thirty percent. Now there are also door-mounted side and seat-mounted airbags. In fact, some motorcars go way further than only having twin airbags, and alternatively have six to eight airbags.
The job of an airbag is to decelerate the driver’s progressive motion as evenly as possible in only a split second. There are three parts to an air bag that help achieve this task:
- The airbag is composed of a slim, nylon fabric that’s folded inside the steering wheel or dashboard and, nowadays, the door or seat
- The sensor is the gadget that tells the airbag to balloon. Inflation takes place when there’s a collision force equal to driving into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles an hour. A mechanical switch is thrown when there is a weight movement that closes an electrical contact, instructing the detectors that a crash has taken place. The sensors get data from an accelerometer that’s part of a microchip
- The airbag’s inflation facility combines sodium azide with potassium nitrate to make nitrogen gas. Hot blasts of the nitrogen gas expand the air bag
Due to the incredibly fast expansion of an airbag, it’s a safety requirement that the driver and passenger sit in an upright position allowing a reasonable space between the steering wheel / dashboard and their face - this sets aside time for the bag to balloon while the passenger/driver are being thrust forwards by the impact of the crash.