History of the Airbag

There have been airbag-like devices for aeroplanes as early as the 1940s, with the first patents filed in the 1950s.

The airbag as known today was invented by John W. Hetrick in 1952 and he patented the device the following year. Hetrick came up with the idea to help protect his own family using expertise from his naval engineering days.

The American inventor Allen Breed then developed a key component for automotive use - the ball-in-tube sensor for crash detection. He marketed this innovation first in 1967 to Chrysler. During this era, Americans were infrequent users of seat belts and a means of offering seat belt-like levels of occupant protection to unbelted occupants in a head-on collision was felt to be a valuable innovation.

The device was briefly available in the United States in the mid-1970's. Ford built an experimental fleet of cars with airbags in 1971. General Motors followed with a fleet of 1,000 experimental vehicles in 1973, and these Chevrolet cars equipped with dual airbags were sold to the public through GM dealers two years later. GM called this the Air Cushion Restraint System the passenger side air bag in the seventies GM, cars had two-stage deployment similar to newer air bags.

The design is conceptually simple—accelerometers trigger the ignition of a gas generator propellant to very rapidly inflate a nylon fabric bag, which reduces the deceleration experienced by the passenger as they come to a stop in the crash situation. The bag has small vent holes to allow the propellant gas to be (relatively) slowly expelled from the bag as the occupant pushes against it.

Before these Chevrolets were sold, airbags were made available to the public in November 1973 when General Motors began offering dual airbags as an extra-cost option on several 1974 model full size cars made by the Buick, Cadillac and Oldsmobile divisions. This system was known as the Air Cushion Restraint System.

About 12000 vehicles with Airbag were produced by GM and Ford from 1973 to 1976. In 1976, production stopped [1] The standard shoulder belts were removed on these cars as they were designed to replace seat belts in frontal impacts. The passenger side airbag on 1970s cars was located in the lower part of the dashpad and it also acted as a knee restraint. The lower part of the dash on the driver side was also different on cars with air bags as it was padded.

The 1970s fleet of 10,000 airbag-equipped GM experienced seven fatalities. One is now suspected to have been caused by the airbag. The crash severity was only moderate and at the time a heart attack was suspected. The victim was cremated without autopsy.

Then in 1980, Mercedes-Benz introduced the airbag in Germany as an option on its high end Mercedes-Benz W126, which also offered such other exotic options as hydropneumatic suspension. In the Mercedes system, the sensors would tighten the seat belts and then deploy the airbag on impact. The airbag was thus no longer marketed as a means of avoiding seat belts, but as a way to obtain an extra margin of occupant safety.

In 1987 the Porsche 944 turbo became the first car in the world to have driver and passenger airbags as standard equipment. The Porsche 944 and 944S had this as an available option. This year also saw the first airbag in a Japanese car, the Honda Legend.

Airbags became common in the 1980s, with Chrysler and Ford introducing them in the mid-1980s; the former made them standard equipment across its entire line in 1990. The Swedish company Autoliv AB, today Autoliv, was granted a patent on side airbags, and torso side protection airbags were first offered as an option on the 1995 model year Volvo 850. [2] Head protection system airbags were included as standard equipment in the 1998 BMW 7-series.

On July 11, 1984, the U.S. government required cars being produced after April 1, 1989 to have driver's side air bags or automatic seat belts (the automatic seat belt was a technology, now discarded, that "forced" motorists to wear seatbelts). Airbag introduction was stimulated by the U.S. DOT.

In 1998, dual front airbags were mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and de-powered, or second-generation air bags were also mandated. This was due to the injuries caused by first-generation air bags that were designed to be powerful enough to restrain people who were not wearing seatbelts.

Despite the 1970s implementation of airbags in GM cars, many conventional automobiles did not even have them until the mid 1990s.

In 2006, Honda introduced the first motorcycle airbag safety system ever installed on a production motorcycle. The airbag was installed on its Gold Wing motorcycle.

Front air bags are not designed to deploy in side impact, rear impact or rollover crashes. Since air bags deploy only once and deflate quickly after the initial impact, they will not be beneficial during a subsequent collision. Safety belts help reduce the risk of injury in many types of crashes. They help to properly position occupants to maximize the air bag's benefits and they help restrain occupants during the initial and any following collisions.

Although they were touted in the 1960s and 70s as a potential seat belt replacement, automobile airbags are now designed and sold as Supplemental Restraint Systems (SRS); car designers have moved on from the initial view of the airbag as a seat belt replacement.