Why the airbag was a feared device before it became a must-have

Airbags have saved more than 50,000 lives in the US since 1987, and transport minister Nitin Gadkari hopes they will save many thousands of lives in India every year, but there was a time when they didn’t inspire such confidence among lawmakers and users

- Abhilash Gaur

On November 28, 1996, a woman drove her car into the back of another car in the US state of Idaho. 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. The American public was scared. There was a clamour for a switch to disable airbags.

Yet, 25 years later the number of airbags in a car is considered a measure of safety. People want airbags, and transport minister Nitin Gadkari is pushing India’s 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 the seat belt got that honour. As Ford’s executive vice-president Fred Secrest told a US Senate Committee hearing on August 1, 1973, belts 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.”