U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater on May 5 announced an advanced airbag rule requiring that future air bags create less risk of serious air bag-induced injuries than current airbags, particularly for small women and young children and provide improved frontal crash protection for all occupants. He said the rule continues a series of actions designed to preserve the benefits of air bags and decrease the potential hazard for children and small adults. The rule issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) imposes performance requirements to ensure that future airbags do not pose an unreasonable risk of serious injury to occupants who are very near the airbag when it deploys. The agency adopts a number of options to ensure that vehicle manufacturers would be free to use various combinations of advanced air bag technologies. With this flexibility, they could use technologies, like dual stage inflators and weight sensors, that control or prevent air bag deployment in appropriate circumstances. Some new vehicles are already equipped with these types of devices. Future tests will incorporate a new family of crash test dummies with improved injury criteria better representing human injury tolerances. The family includes 1-, 3- and 6-year-old child dummies, a small (5th percentile) female dummy, and an average size (50th percentile) male dummy. Currently, only a 50th percentile male dummy is required. During the first stage, from Sept. 1, 2003 to Aug. 31, 2006, increasing percentages of motor vehicles will be required to meet requirements for reducing airbag risks, either by automatically turning off the airbag in the presence of young children or deploying the airbag in a manner much less likely to cause serious or fatal injury to out-of-position occupants. To test the ability to detect the presence of children, the rule specifies that child dummies be placed in child seats that are, in turn, placed on the passenger seat. It also specifies tests that are conducted with unrestrained child dummies sitting, kneeling, standing, or lying on the passenger seat. For manufacturers that decide to design their passenger airbags to deploy in a low risk manner, the final rule specifies that unbelted child dummies be placed against the instrument panel. This is because pre-crash braking can move unrestrained children and small adults forward into or near that position before the airbag deploys. The ability of driver airbags to deploy in a low risk manner will be tested by placing the 5th percentile adult female dummy against the steering wheel and then deploying the air bag. In addition, vehicle manufacturers will be required to meet a rigid barrier crash test with both unbelted 5th percentile adult female dummies and unbelted 50th percentile adult male dummies. The unbelted rigid barrier test replicates what happens to motor vehicles and their occupants in real world crashes better than the current sled test does. The maximum test speed for unbelted dummy testing will be 25 mph.