The airbag design is nothing new, and some may be astounded to know the design has been in existence for over 6 decades. The first patent on an airbag for aeroplanes was lodged during World War Two. In the 80s, the first commercial airbags were a safety feature in vehicles.

Up to the present day, statistics reveal that air bags cut the possibility of death in a straight anterior crash by as much as thirty percent. Nowadays we also have seat-mounted and door mounted side air bags. In point of fact, some cars go way beyond merely having two air bags, and instead have six to eight air bags.

The task of an air bag is to ease the driver’s advanced motion as smoothly as possible in just a fraction of a second. There are three parts to an airbag that help achieve this job:

  • The airbag itself is composed of a slim, nylon, which is folded into the dashboard or steering wheel and, these days, the seat or door
  • The detector is the device that orders the airbag to balloon. Ballooning takes place when there is a collision force equating to running into a brick wall at around 15 miles per hour. A switch is thrown when there is a weight shift that cuts off an electrical contact, informing the sensors that a smash has occurred. The detectors get information from an accelerometer that’s part of a microchip
  • The airbag’s expansion facility melds sodium azide with potassium nitrate to produce nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the nitrogen gas expand the air bag

Due to the incredibly fast deployment of an airbag, it’s fundamental the passenger and driver sit in an upright position providing a reasonable distance between the steering wheel / dashboard and their face - this provides time for the airbag to expand while the passenger/driver are being pushed forwards by the shock of the accident.