Question 1

How do airbags work?

Accepted Answer

Airbag technology has changed quite dramatically over the years, but the key thing remains: they are rapidly inflated cushions designed to keep your body from colliding directly with the rest of the car. When a sensor in your airbag detects a collision, a rapid-fire series of events causes the nylon bag to expand almost immediately. The intent is for your head, arms, or torso to collide with the cushion rather than the hard dashboard, steering wheel, or windows.

You may wonder how fast a car needs to be going to trigger an airbag or how quickly an airbag deploys. All airbags are designed to deploy even at low to moderately low speeds, meaning a head-on collision with a solid object at 8-14 MPH should cause the airbag to activate. When the airbag comes out, it has to accelerate extremely quickly to be effective, sometimes up to 200 MPH.

Modern cars have been required to use advanced airbag technology since 2007. These regulations required automakers to provide vehicles with airbags that adjust the deployment of the airbag based on the size of the person (judged using weight sensors in the seat.) This led to a significant decrease in the total injuries and deaths caused by airbag deployment alone.

Question 2

What kind of airbag injuries are there?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, there are still cases where people are injured due to an airbag. In some instances, injuries can be caused by a properly functioning airbag, but in most cases, serious airbag injuries or deaths are due to defective airbags, improper seat belt usage, or pre-existing health conditions in the victim.

Some of the most common injuries that can be caused by airbags include:

Neck injury

Spine injury

Lacerations

Bruises or burns

Face and eye injury

Brain injury

Broken ribs or chest injury

In any accident where an airbag is deployed, there’s a significantly greater risk of injury when a driver or passenger is unbuckled. Airbags are designed to work in conjunction with tensioning seatbelts as part of the vehicle’s overall safety crash system.

There’s also a higher chance of injury when the victim is elderly, as their bones tend to be more brittle, and there are likely to be other health conditions at play as well, such as age-related osteoporosis.

Children should always be fastened into a child seat in the back seats, as sitting a child in the front seat of the car poses significant risks in the event of an accident.

Defective or Improperly Installed Airbags

As the technology in airbags improved over the years, the complexity behind their production, installation, and maintenance has also increased. This means there are potentially more points of failure due to any number of mistakes before the airbag makes it into your car.

If an airbag malfunctions, it could be due to the negligence of a manufacturer or dealership, so it’s important to have your vehicle thoroughly inspected in case of any airbag-related injury.

The most famous case of defective airbags is the Takata airbag case, in which about 67 million vehicles with Takata airbags were recalled. The defects involved airbags that exploded rather than inflated, potentially sending ” shrapnel into the face and body of both the driver and front-seat passenger,” according to a CNN Money report.

Florida residents are likely to be particularly concerned with the Takata recall due to the relationship between this dangerous defect and high temperatures and humidity. Under some specific conditions, the airbags would sometimes explode without warning. This defect was tied to 15 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Other defects can include:

Failure to properly inflate

Sensor failure, causing unexpected inflation or no inflation in the event of a crash

Inadequate design that failed to prevent crash injuries according to the warranty or minimum regulatory standards

Defects that can cause an airbag to inflate unevenly, applying unexpected pressure

Corrosion

Premature inflation

Faulty designs

Counterfeit and aftermarket installations

Electrical system defects

An injury that seems inevitable may have actually been caused or worsened by a defective airbag. Always speak to a personal injury attorney after you have been injured in a car accident to determine if your airbag could have contributed to your injuries or failed to prevent them to an unacceptable extent.

What to Know if You Were Injured by an Airbag in a Car Accident