Gadgetory

air bags positively litter the front row of late-model cars but here in the back you kind of get table scraps maybe one of those side curtain air bags reaches back this far and maybe one of the recent and rare seat belt air bags the shoulder strap is actually an air bag housed within what looks like a traditional belt but if there's an accident sensors determine when the inflatable belt should deploy signaling the belts tubular air bag to inflate with compressed gas an IIHS survey found 12% of people injured in crashes were in the back seat an even more notable rate when you recall that often that seats empty so automotive industry supply our TRW has now developed two rear air bags one deploys down from the roof the other out from the back of the front seat now these vaccine air bags look a little odd right but the dynamics that led them to that shape were based on a study of German car accidents from 99 to 2013 a lot of years TRW found that the majority of folks were injured in the backseat in the crash either got hurt by slamming into the back of this front seat or because they only had a shoulder belt on and nothing else restraining them all the force was concentrated here and they got a thorax or chest injury the airbag seeks to distribute that force much more gently in smaller cars TRW expects the seat mounted airbag is going to work out better in larger vehicles the roof-mounted design could be a better idea by the way a rear airbags are not just about protecting people in the back according to Japan's Institute for traffic accident research and data analysis serious injuries and fatalities to front seat occupants declined by 25 to 28 percent when the rear passenger is restrained because they in the front no longer had this one or 200 pound projectile in the back hitting their seat and causing more impact airbags back here would be expected to even further reduce front passenger injury due to rear passengers these new bags are likely to arrive in Europe first where some new rear seat crash standards are rolling out soon the US has yet to develop a framework for even evaluating them but the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is working on that so why is it taken so long to get rear air bags into momentum like this well two major factors one is economics our makers aren't really crazy about jacking up the MSRP by adding features even if their safety features sometimes that are not going to be used very often underappreciated and unsung if you will secondly 14 states in the u.s. right now don't even require that you use a backseat seat belt so in many ways this is the low-hanging fruit even before we put some inflatables back here it pays to double-check your States rear seat belt laws the availability of rear air bags in the car you buy in a few years and regardless of either that your passengers are using the restraints they've already got in the back more realities of modern driving revealed now at CNET on cars comm click on smarter driver