It’s a little known fact that air bags are actually not a new concept, and some people may be astounded to realise the concept has been in existence for over 6 decades. The very first patent on an inflatable crash-landing device for airplanes was lodged during World War II. During the 1980s, the first commercial airbags were present in motorcars.
Up to now, stats reveal that airbags cut the possibility of death in a straight head-on smash by around 30%. These days we also have seat-mounted and door-mounted side air bags. Incredibly, some automobiles go way further than just having two airbags, and instead have six to eight air bags.
The job of an airbag is to slow down the passenger’s progressive movement as smoothly as possible in only a fraction of a second. An air bag can achieve this goal in three steps:
- The bag itself is composed of a slim, nylon fabric, which is compressed inside the dashboard or steering wheel and, these days, the seat or door
- The detector is the device that instructs the airbag to expand. Inflation takes place when there is a crash force equal to driving into a wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour. A mechanical switch is flicked when there’s a mass shift that cuts off an electric contact, informing the detectors that a smash has occurred. The detectors receive information from an accelerometer that’s part of a silicon chip
- The airbag’s ballooning system combines sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate to produce nitrogen gas. Hot eruptions of the nitrogen gas inflate the airbag
Because of the superfast inflation of an air bag, it’s a safety requirement that the passenger and driver sit in an upright position giving a safe distance between their face and the steering wheel / dashboard – this leaves time for the airbag to deploy while the driver/passenger are being thrust forwards by the impact of the smash.
