Automakers and insurance companies formally submitted to federal regulators the first recommended side air-bag design aimed at limiting serious injuries to passengers who aren’t seated properly in vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) received guidelines meant to assure no more than 5 percent of those out-of-position passengers are seriously hurt. The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and two other groups developed the designs, which the automakers pledged to meet by the 2004-model year.
There are no federal standards for side air bags, though side-impact crashes accounted for 30 percent of passenger-vehicle deaths in 1998. While side air bags haven’t been blamed for any deaths, more than 150 children and small adults have died from the force of frontal air bags.
“When frontal air bags first went into vehicles, we didn’t expect to see the type of injuries seen in out-of-position people,” said Julie Rochman, a spokeswoman for the insurers’ group. “There are no common criteria among manufacturers today for side air bags. Now we have a way to compare apples to apples.”
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and 17 other automakers offer side air bags as standard or optional equipment. Volvo AB, Bayerische Motoren Worke AG, and Saab are among the automakers that offer side air bags on all models.
NHTSA said in an April 2000 report that three injuries, one of them serious, were found in a study of 50 accidents where side air bags deployed.