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Airbag
For years, the trusty seatbelts provided the sole
form of passive restraints in our car. There were debates about their
safety, especially related to children, but over time, much of the
country adopted mandatory seat-belt laws. Statistics have show that
seat-belts have saved thousands of lives that might have been lost in
collisions.
Airbags have been under development for many years. The first
commercial airbags appeared in automobiles in the 1980s.They are a
proven safety device that save a growing number of lives, and prevent
a large number of head and chest injuries. They are reducing driver
deaths by 14 percent and passenger bags reduce deaths by about 11
percent.
People who use seat-belts think they do not need
airbags. But they do. Airbags and lap/shoulder belts work together as
a system, and one without the other isn't as effective. Deaths are 12
percent lower among drivers with belts and 9 percent lower among
belted passengers.
Since model year, all new cars have been required
to have airbags on both driver and passenger sides. Light trucks came
under the rule in 1999.Newer than steering-wheel-mounted or
dashboard-mounted bags are seat-mounted door-mounted and window
airbags. Airbags are subject of serious government and industry
researches and tests.
Airbags can cause some unintended adverse effects.
Nearly all of these are minor injuries like bruises and abrasions that
are more than offset by the lives airbags are saving.
You can eliminate this risk, and position is what counts. Serious
inflation injuries occur primarily because of peoples position when
airbags first begin inflating.
Before looking at the specifics, let's review our knowledge of the
laws of motion. We know that moving objects have momentum. Unless an
outside force acts on an object the object will continue to move in
its present speed and direction. Cars consist of several objects
including the vehicle itself, loose object in the car and of course
the passengers itself. If these objects are not restrained, they will
continue moving at whatever speed the car is traveling at, even if the
car is stopped by collision.
Stopping an objects momentum requires force acting
over a period of time. When a car crashes the force required to stop
an object is very great because the car's momentum has changed
instantly while the passengers has not. The goal of any supplement
restraint system is to help stop the passengers while doing as little
damage to him or her as possible.
What an airbag want to do is to slow down the
passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage .The constraints
that it has to work are huge .The airbag has the space between the
passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a
second to work with. Even that tiny amount of space and time is
valuable
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