While air bags are providing significant overall safety benefits, NHTSA is concerned that current air bags have adverse effects on certain groups of people in limited situations. Of particular concern, NHTSA has confirmed 105 primarily low speed crashes in which the deployment of an air bag resulted in fatal injuries to an occupant, as of June 1, 1998. NHTSA believes that none of these occupants would have died if the air bag had not deployed.(7)
The primary factor linking these deaths is the proximity of occupants to the air bag when it deployed. These deaths occurred under circumstances in which the occupant's upper body was very near the air bag when it deployed.
There were two other factors common to many of the deaths. First, apart from 13 infants fatally injured while riding in rear-facing infant seats, most of the fatally injured people were not using any type of child seat or seat belt. This allowed the people to move forward more readily than properly restrained occupants under conditions of pre-impact braking or low level crashes. Second, the air bags involved in those deaths were, like all current air bags, so-called "one-size-fits-all" air bags that have a single inflation level.(8) These air bags deploy with the same force in very low speed crashes as they do in higher speed crashes.
The most direct behavioral solution to the problem of child fatalities from air bags is for children to be properly belted in the back seat whenever possible, while the most direct behavioral solution for the adult fatalities is to use seat belts and move the driver seat as far back as practicable. Implementing these solutions necessitates increasing the percentage of children who are seated in the back and properly restrained in child safety seats. It also necessitates improving the current 69 percent rate of seat belt usage by a combination of methods, including the enactment of State primary seat belt use laws.(9)
The most direct technical solution to the problem of fatalities from air bags is to require that motor vehicle manufacturers install advanced air bags that protect occupants from the adverse effects that can occur from being too close to a deploying air bag.
All of these solutions are being pursued by the agency. However, until advanced air bags are incorporated into the vehicle fleet, behavioral changes based on better information and communication about potential hazards and simple, non-automatic technology are the best means of addressing fatalities from air bags, especially those involving children.
To partially implement these solutions, and preserve the benefits of air bags, while reducing the risk of injury to certain people, NHTSA issued several final rules in the past year-and-a-half.
One rule requires new passenger cars and light trucks to bear new, enhanced air bag warning labels. (61 FR 60206; November 27, 1996)
Another rule provided vehicle manufacturers with the temporary option of certifying compliance based on a sled test using an unbelted dummy, instead of conducting a vehicle-to-barrier crash test using an unbelted dummy. (62 FR 12960; March 19, 1997) While vehicle manufacturers could have depowered many or most of their vehicles' air bags without changes to Standard No. 208, the final rule expedited this process. In view of concerns that the gentler crash pulse of the sled test would enable many vehicles to meet Standard No. 208's existing injury criteria without an air bag deploying, the agency added neck injury criteria to help ensure that air bags deploy and are not depowered so much as to be ineffective. Unless the air bags deployed, a vehicle would be very unlikely to be able to pass the neck injury criteria limits. The agency concluded that depowering current single-inflation level air bags would most likely reduce the adverse effects of these air bags, although it also expressed concern that depowering could result in less protection being provided to occupants in higher speed crashes, especially for those who are unbelted and/or heavier than average.
NHTSA has also issued two final rules related to manual on-off switches. One extends the temporary time period during which vehicle manufacturers are permitted to offer manual on-off switches for the passenger air bag for vehicles without rear seats or with rear seats that are too small to accommodate rear facing infant seats. (62 FR 798; January 6, 1997) The other final rule exempts motor vehicle dealers and repair businesses from the statutory prohibition against making federally-required safety equipment inoperative so that they may install retrofit manual on-off switches for driver and passenger air bags in vehicles owned by or used by persons who are in groups at special risk from air bags and whose requests for switches have been authorized by the agency. (62 FR 62406; November 21, 1997)
On the behavioral side, the agency has initiated a national campaign to increase usage of seat belts through the enactment of primary seat belt use laws, more public education, and more effective enforcement of existing belt use and child safety seat use laws.
In conjunction with the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, as well as Transport Canada, and in cooperation with domestic and foreign vehicle manufacturers, restraint system suppliers and others through the Motor Vehicle Safety Research Advisory Committee (MVSRAC), NHTSA has undertaken data analysis and research to address remaining questions concerning the development and introduction of advanced air bags.
In today's notice, the agency is proposing to require advanced air bags.
