Does
your Mom always make you or your little brother or sister sit in
the backseat of the car now? It may be harder to see where you're going back there, but
it's definitely safer. Experts tell parents that their children are safer in the backseat
where there are no airbags.
But wait, airbags are safety devices, right? Right. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 4,230 people are alive today because of their airbags.
But
did you know that 139 people -- 61 adults and 78 children -- have been killed by airbags
since 1990? Airbags are designed to explode out of dashboards and side panels of the car
to protect the driver and front seat passenger from slamming into the windshield or
dashboard in a collision. But older model airbags can open at speeds up to 200 miles per
hour, equal to the force of a heavyweight knockout punch. That punch has proved fatal to
some children and small adults.
Dr. Tyler Kress at UT
Knoxville has been researching airbags for a long time. His work and that of his
colleagues at the UT Institute for Trauma and Injury Prevention has helped in the creation
of a new "smart" airbag. If you have a new model car -- 1998 or later -- you
probably have one of these smart airbags.
These new airbags deploy with much less force during a low-speed collision than during a high-speed collision, making the "punch" much safer, especially to children and small adults, says Dr. Kress. They can sense a driver's position, weight, height, and distance from the dashboard, as well as the severity of the crash.
