This New Type Of Airbag Prevents Passengers From Hitting Each Other In A Crash
Modern cars are littered with airbags, but unless you've been in a serious accident recently, or you're like me and you watch crash test videos religiously, you might not know where they all are hiding inside your vehicle. The earliest airbags in cars solely focused on protecting the front passengers, first with the introduction of the steering wheel-mounted front airbag by Mercedes-Benz in 1981, then carmakers realized passengers might want airbags too, so a second airbag was added in the dashboard in front of the passenger.
Side impact airbags were the next innovation in airbag technology, first introduced in 1994 by the safety conscious Swedes at Volvo. The then-burgeoning Korean automaker Kia was the first company to sell a car in the United States with a driver's knee airbag in the 1996 Kia Sportage, then Volvo came back into the spotlight with the inflatable side curtain airbag in 1998. Since then, different cars have introduced different airbag technologies like the Scion iQ's rear window airbag and Ford's inflatable seat belt airbag, but the latest airbag to gain traction in most new cars is the front-center airbag, which is the first airbag solely designed to prevent occupants from hitting each other in the event of a crash.
General Motors introduced the first front-center airbag in its three-row midsize crossovers of 2013, the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Chevrolet Traverse. In a press release, GM said the new airbag, "is designed to provide restraint during passenger-side crashes when the driver is the only front occupant, and also acts as an energy absorbing cushion between driver and front passenger in side crashes, as well as benefitting in rollover crashes."
Nowadays many other new cars are equipped with these front-center airbags, which combine with front airbags, side airbags, side curtain airbags, and knee airbags to form a comprehensive cushioning barrier between front seat occupants, as well as other objects that may cause injury. We've discussed how back seat passenger safety hasn't made the same advances as front passenger safety has in recent years, so maybe rear seat center airbags will be the next addition to the gaggle of airbags in new vehicles sometime soon. The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the only car on sale right now with airbags that deploy out of the front seatbacks to protect rear seat passengers in a frontal collision, though, so that innovation may make its way to other, more plebeian cars before a rear center airbag.
