The death of a Tennessee child last October demonstrated that airbags can kill people, even those who are belted into place. The case attracted headlines because most of the 51 people killed by air bags in the United States had not been using seat belts. That single death changed the whole picture. No longer was the question on the table: "How can we protect people from their own urge to disobey warnings?"
Now, the question is this: Are we riding with a killer disguised as a friend?
The specter of safety equipment killing children is not just alarming to parents. The prospect of being squashed like a bug by a hot, 150- mph balloon also raised a backlash against air bags, a safety measure that has been subject to bitter dispute. One reader of Business Week magazine called them an "example of government regulation gone crazy." Another said, "There is no way to make the automotive air bag anything other than an inherently dangerous fail-unsafe explosive device."
For some people, the prospect of a mushrooming air bag was even scarier than the prospect of being thrown against a dashboard or windshield at 65 mph. In fact, a new survey released Feb. 2, 1997, showed that only 57 percent of consumers considered air bags an important factor in deciding to buy a car, down from 82 percent the year before. And fully 24 percent -- up from 6 percent -- said the lifesaving technology was not important at all in the purchase decision.
The problem of child deaths is getting worse as passenger-side bags gain market share: 10 kids were killed in 1995, but 18 died in 1996. Fewer drivers are being killed by the safety measure, however. Just one of the 19 driver deaths occurred in the 28-million cars built in 1995 and 1996, all of which had dual air bags.
If you're getting ready to dump your air bags, keep reading. The government estimates that as of November 1996, air bags had saved the lives of a net of 1,481 drivers and 133 passengers (that's people saved minus people killed). Like the much smaller death toll, "life toll" is rapidly increasing as more cars carry dual air bags. Want an overview of the highway death toll?
A good friend.
In total, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), air bags reduce fatal injuries by 11 percent for drivers and 13 percent for adult passengers. When air bags and seat belts are compared to no protection, the comparison is dramatic: "The latest studies indicate that occupants protected by safety belts and air bags are 50 percent less likely than unrestrained occupants to suffer fatal or serious injury in a crash."
Even though air bags are saving lives, the status quo is not acceptable if kids are being killed by safety equipment. Yet safety experts insist that the recent information is not really a surprise. "In the early 1970s, we knew that children and out-of-position adults would pose a problem," says Steven Batterman, a University of Pennsylvania expert on auto restraint systems. In addition to proper design, every product in such wide-scale use needs "feedback from the field and fine-tuning," Batterman says, and air bags are no different.
He lays the problem to auto-industry sluggishness: "If GM had not waited these 20 years [to introduce air bags], a lot of these problems would have been ironed out by now."
Kyle Johnson, GM's spokesman on safety issues, rejects that argument, saying GM was reluctant to introduce air bags from concern about just the kind of problem that's now surfacing, combined with a preference for an easier route to the same goal -- reduced fatalities. "Industry didn't feel that it would save as many lives, and felt that mandatory seat belt laws would save more lives," Johnson says. Air bags were installed on some 1973 Fords and GM cars bought by the government, Batterman adds. "Every now and then you hear about one being deployed, saving somebody in an accident."
Still, ironies abound in the airbag story. They were first proposed in the late 1960s as primary safety systems, so the bags were made powerful enough to protect a 170-lb., 5-foot 9-inch man who was, like 90 percent of drivers, not belted into position. "The federal standard is to protect the average male dummy," says Johnson, alluding to the crash-test dummies auto makers use to assess safety in test crashes.
But times have changed, and seat belt usage has reached 68 percent. "But," Johnson notes, "we've still got this standard that is putting some people at risk while protecting somebody who is breaking the law in 49 states and the District of Columbia."
