Not many individuals realise that the conception of the air bag – a soft shock absorber to impact against in a crash – has been around for many years. The very first patent on an air bag for airplanes was submitted during World War II. During the 80s, the first commercial airbags were a safety feature in motorcars.
Up to now, stats indicate that airbags cut back the possibility of dying in a direct head-on crash by about 30%. Now we also have seat mounted and door-mounted side airbags. Incredibly, some automobiles go far beyond just having two air bags, and alternatively have 6 to 8 air bags.
The job of an airbag is to ease the passenger/driver’s forward movement as smoothly as possible in only a split second. An air bag can achieve this goal in 3 steps:
- The airbag itself is composed of a thin, nylon, which is compressed into the steering wheel or dashboard and, these days, the seat or door
- The sensor is the gadget that orders the bag to balloon. Inflation takes place when there is a crash force equal to running into a brick wall at around 15 miles an hour. A mechanical switch is flicked when there is a weight shift that cuts off an electric contact, telling the detectors that a crash has occurred. The detectors obtain information from an accelerometer built into a silicon chip
- The bag’s ballooning facility reacts sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate to produce nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the nitrogen gas blow up the air bag
Because of the incredibly fast deployment of an airbag, it’s essential the passenger and driver sit in the seat with a straight back providing a reasonable distance between their face and the dashboard / steering wheel – this allows time for the bag to inflate while they are being forced forward by the affect of the smash.
