How airbags transformed from a feared device to a must-have

 

On November 28, 1996, a ghastly accident occurred in the US state of Idaho. A woman drove her car into the back of another car. Her one-year-old daughter, Alexandra, who was in the front passenger seat beside her, was decapitated. Her head was thrown “through the door window and into the parking lot,” news agency AP reported.

But it was not a high-speed crash. The two cars were inside a mall parking lot. The culprit was the passenger airbag in Alexandra’s mother’s car, which had expanded with its full force at 320 kmph.

By April 1997, airbags that were meant to save lives had killed 63 Americans, of whom 38 were children. Alexandra’s case was the goriest, but all were equally tragic. The American public was scared. Some 35 million cars and light trucks already had airbags, and from September 1, 1997, front airbags were going to be mandatory across America. There was a clamour for a switch to disable airbags.

Yet, here we are 25 years later when the number of airbags in a car is considered a measure of safety. People want airbags, and transport minister Nitin Gadkari is pushing carmakers to oblige. So, how did the once-feared airbag become a must-have? Let’s rewind 50 years.

Cushion for the careless

We now see airbags as the primary safety device in a car, but 50 years ago that was not the case. The seat belt was, and perhaps still is, the single most important safety device in your car. Although seat belts in the 1960s and 1970s were basic lap belts (there was no strap across the shoulder), they did save lives.

As Ford’s executive vice-president Fred Secrest told a US Senate Committee hearing on August 1, 1973: belts alone were more effective than airbags “primarily because belts keep people from being thrown out of the car…. The chances of an occupant being killed in an accident are four times greater if the occupant is ejected from the car.”

A front airbag only protected the occupant from injuries that occurred due to impact on the steering wheel and the windshield, but a three-point belt (shoulder+lap) was just as good. Secrest said: “The airbag was intended to be a superior crash pad, to reduce the severity of the second collision impact of a lapbelted occupant in a frontal collision.”

So, why were automobile companies spending millions of dollars developing airbags, and why was the Senate committee so eager to see them installed in cars?

The problem was, although cars came fitted with belts people didn’t use them. In 1972, just 20% of American car users wore seat belts even though 38,000 car occupants had been killed and 3.5 million injured in crashes that year. Wearing a seat belt was not compulsory, and imposing a countrywide seat belt rule was politically difficult.

That’s why lawmakers were keen to have a “passive restraint system” that would protect careless car occupants in a crash. Insurance firm Allstate’s director of automotive engineering, Jack Martens, told the committee, “The airbag is a device that works in spite of occupant apathy.”

The insurance industry said 66% of accidents were front-end collisions, and 89% of accident deaths occurred in the front seats. So, the focus was on providing front airbags. In fact, a rule to make airbags mandatory in all cars sold in the US after August 15, 1975 was announced but it was stalled by a court over doubts regarding the design of crash dummies used to test airbags.

Lifesaver from the start

Nonetheless, carmakers had extensively tested airbags by 1973. About 2,000 GM and Ford cars had covered 55 million kilometres between them, and there had been 12 crashes in which their airbags had deployed. The results were largely excellent. In one case, a Mercury (Ford) driver had driven into the back of a parked car at 109kmph without a seat belt. He had slid forward in his seat and fractured his knee but was unharmed otherwise.

A minor girl had driven her car into a railway sign. The impact had broken the engine mountings but the girl and her friend had walked away from the crash unharmed.

It won’t be allowed today but some of the early airbag testing was done using baboons in place of dummies. And to ensure that the gas that inflated the airbag was not toxic, monkeys were exposed to it in a sealed space for 30 minutes.

Though the airbags performed well, they were very much a work in progress. There were doubts about their reliability in very cold places like Alaska, and concerns about permanent hearing loss from their explosive deployment. But all the testers who had been in an accident said they had never heard the bag deploy as the crash itself had been louder.

So, how did the ‘benign’ airbags of the early 1970s turn into somewhat dangerous and unpredictable devices by the 1990s?

Powerful to a fault

Well, this was a result of trying to protect occupants who did not wear belts. US guidelines at the time required that airbags should be able to protect an “average adult male not wearing a seat belt”. But the average US male was heavy. The current figure is about 200 pounds or 90kg.

To stop a heavy man from crashing into the steering wheel during an accident, the airbag had to deploy with great force. At the 1973 Senate committee hearing Ronald H Haas from GM’s Oldsmobile division had said that in a 50kmph crash, the time available to deploy was 0.04 seconds, or one twenty-fifth of a second.

The force was simply too much for lighter people, such as children and old women. While airbags were saving lives, they were known to sometimes cause arm fractures in drivers. If the car wasn’t moving fast, and the occupant’s body did not have enough forward momentum, the airbag “punched” their head backward with too much force. This could cause injuries to the face and the head, and also make the neck snap backwards. That’s how little Alexandra Greer had been decapitated.

The good news was that by the mid-1990s seat belt use had risen across the US, so experts advised depowering airbags by 20-35%. Another suggestion was to improve the way airbags were folded and tucked into the steering and the dashboard. The unravelling folds could be used to direct an airbag’s force away from the occupant.

Advanced sensors that could detect the speed of the vehicle, the size and weight of an occupant, and whether they were belted or not, also helped in making airbags safer with time.

A boon despite flaws

The airbag is still not perfect, and unlike a seat belt you can’t find out how good it is till you have an accident. And even if engineers develop the perfect airbag, the possibility of manufacturing defects can’t be wished away.

The Takata airbag recall that started in 2016 affects 67 million airbags in 42 million vehicles and is still not complete. These airbags sometimes malfunction in hot and humid conditions, especially when they are old. They contain an ammonium-nitrate-based propellant that can ignite spontaneously, sending metal shards from the airbag flying around the cabin.

At last count, faulty Takata airbags had killed at least 27 people worldwide since 2002, according to Consumer Reports. But on the other hand, airbags have saved at least 50,000 lives since 1987 in the US alone. So, on balance, the airbag is a device that you would rather have in your car.

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In the 1970s, government decided the profit margins of Indian industries

Imagine being asked to pay more for a car you bought a year ago. Early in 1972, people who had bought Premier Padmini (Fiat 1100 D) cars between July 1, 1970 and April 15, 1971, received letters to cough up Rs 1,800 each. It was a lot of money in those days when a new car cost Rs 22,000 (see graphic).
The buyers had signed undertakings to pay up if Supreme Court of India allowed Premier to increase prices. The company and its two competitors — Hindustan Motors and Standard Motor Products — had challenged Government of India, which fixed prices of everything from bread to cars in those days.
After losing the case, the government reluctantly notified new ex-factory prices for all three makes of cars on January 24, 1972:

If these ‘low’ prices surprise you, in January 1957 the same cars cost Rs 10,424, Rs 8,934 and Rs 8,702, respectively, at the factory gates. Today, you probably pay that much for a routine service and synthetic engine oil. That’s what inflation does to money.
This case shows what a bizarre economy we were only four decades ago when government even decided how much profit a business could earn. For car prices, the government allowed only 12% return on capital, but Supreme Court increased it to 16%. Either way, market forces had no place in the economy. The home ministry’s Enforcement Department raided car makers and arrested their officers on charges of price manipulation.
Swadeshi (indigenisation) was the only holy grail, shutting the door on new foreign technology. All three cars were almost completely localised, and continued unchanged decade after decade:

The government also had a tendency to get into businesses it had no business being in. When people complained about the deteriorating quality of car components, it set up a committee to suggest improvements and sent inspectors to factories. It in fact opposed the car makers’ demand for higher prices on the ground that they were slipping up on quality.

Politicians of every colour talked about nationalising the car industry, some said the three companies should be merged to reduce costs and bring down prices. Singed by the Supreme Court order, the government sought the law department’s opinion on denying courts any say in matters of price fixation. They were scary times indeed for businesses.
And then, the government decided to turn car maker itself. There had been talk of a cheap car or a people’s car since the 1950s, and in the second half of 1970, the government announced its intention. Two years later, a Cabinet decision was still awaited.
Meanwhile, the way to lower car prices was quite evident to all: lower taxes and duties. The on-road prices of cars were almost 40% higher than the ex-factory price, yet the government refused to look into it. That attitude continues to this day, be it cars, petrol or your weekend pizza treat.
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