Generally speaking, in the event of a collision, passengers' heads and bodies can be prevented from directly hitting the interior of the vehicle, thus reducing the degree of personal injury. According to the investigation of the American Highway Safety Administration, the use of airbags can reduce the driving mortality of automobiles by 1 1%, and the impact force of frontal collision can be reduced by 30%.
When the collision sensor detects a collision, the relevant control system will judge the degree of collision and decide whether to trigger the inflator. Usually, the inflation module consists of a gas generator such as gasoline or explosives and an ignition device. For the safety of disposal, airbags usually only detonate at high temperature.
Because the impact process is short, it takes about 25-35 milliseconds for the airbag to trigger inflation. Inflating for too long will lose its effectiveness.
It is worth noting that although the auxiliary airbag can achieve the purpose of reducing passenger casualties in most accidents, it may cause greater harm to passengers in a few accidents. Choosing a car with an auxiliary airbag cannot completely guarantee the absolute safety of the occupants when an accident occurs. It is still necessary to wear seat belts only when passengers have enough safety awareness and implement them, in order to exert the greatest effect.
Nowadays, airbags have been stipulated by most countries as one of the necessary passive safety devices for vehicles.
history
From 65438 to 0952, John W. Hetrick, an American engineer, was inspired by a traffic accident, which prompted the related research work. In August, 1953 and 18 obtained the patent of American auxiliary restraint system.
197 1 year, Ford installed auxiliary airbags on various experimental vehicles. 1974, GM took the lead in installing driver's seat auxiliary airbags on commercial vehicles.
Later, the secondary airbags were also installed on the front passenger seats. According to the impact force, they can be divided into two inflation modes. However, Lee Iacocca, the former chairman of Chrysler, said in his autobiography that in the 1970s, customers only wanted cars with high horsepower and big body, and were not interested in safety equipment, and the utilization rate of seat belts was also very low, so the auxiliary airbags quickly disappeared from the market.
1980 65438+In February, Mercedes-Benz S series became the first car with airbags officially sold in Europe. From 65438 to 0988, Chrysler began to install auxiliary airbags on all its cars, and made a big TV advertisement to demonstrate the effectiveness of auxiliary airbags, which really started the safety equipment competition in the automobile industry.
1984, the highway safety administration of the United States formulated the federal motor vehicle safety standards (federal motor vehicle safety standards; Article 208 of FMVSS) increases the requirement for installing airbags.
1995, the us congress formally passed a bill, which provided clear rules and guidance, and required new cars to be equipped with double airbags as standard from 1995. Since 1997, trucks have been treated in this way.