Airbag Failures Prompt Auto Makers to Issue Recalls
Author: Alan Haburchak

Since their invention in the 1950s, up through development
during the 1970s and finally institution as a required
feature in the 1980s, airbags have become an important
factor in decreasing injuries of those involved in
automotive accidents. Airbags function as supplemental
safety devices designed to work with seat belts to minimize
injuries in vehicle accidents. In theory, airbags reduce
the chance that the occupant of a vehicle's upper body or
head will strike the vehicle's interior during a crash,
thus decreasing the incidence of injury. Both frontal and
side-impact air bags are designed to deploy in moderate to
severe crashes.

During a car accident various sensors throughout the
vehicle determine the severity of the crash. An onboard
computer, called the Electronic Control Unit (ECU),
processes the information and, in an event of moderate to
severe crash, it sends a signal to the inflater inside the
air bag module. At that point the airbag is supposed to
inflate, protecting the vehicle's occupants from serious
injury as a result of striking the vehicle's interior. As a
result of the effectiveness of initial driver and passenger
front airbags, the adoption of rear-passenger and
side-impact curtain airbags has become more common over the
last decade, in an attempt to create the highest degree of
safety possible.

Unfortunately, as the number of airbags being placed in new
cars has increased, so has the overall need for the airbags
themselves. Thus, more airbags are manufactured and the
overall quality of the airbags produced has seen some
degree of decline. One way this decrease in quality has
become apparent is in the increasing incidence of defective
airbags and airbag failure in automobiles produced both in
the United States and abroad.

Because drivers usually never have the chance to test the
airbags in their vehicle until the airbag's functionality
becomes a matter of life or death, the possibility of
defective airbags has lead manufacturers of a variety of
automobiles to issue recalls for the airbags in the
vehicles.  If there exists a possibility that the airbags
might malfunction or there might occur airbag failure.

The following is a non-comprehensive list of airbag
failure-related automobile recalls instituted in April
through June of 2007 from the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA):

April 2007  BMW is recalling 225 MY 2007 6-Series passenger
vehicles for failing to conform to the requirements of
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, 'Occupant
Crash Protection. The front passenger seat has a sensing
system that detects if the seat is occupied. This sensing
is programmed to detect if the seat is occupied by a small
adult or certain child restraint seats. Placing certain
child seats on the front passenger seat is designed to
result in the automatic deactivation of the front seat
passenger's airbag. In some cases, the sensing system may
misinterpret a properly seated small adult as one of these
specific child seats, resulting in deactivation of the
front passenger airbag when the airbag might be beneficial
for the adult, increasing the risk of injury in a crash.

May 2007

DaimlerChrysler is recalling 270,958 MY 2005 Town and
Country and Dodge Caravan minivans originally sold in or
currently registered in the 27 states plus the District of
Columbia that use greater amounts of salt for winter road
deicing. The up-front (UF) airbag sensors that contain
brass bushings installed in these vehicles may corrode and
crack allowing water to enter the sensor. These sensors
provide enhanced air bag performance in certain types of
frontal crashes. In one of these crashes, with one or both
of the vehicle's UF sensors inoperative, the occupants will
not benefit from the enhanced air bag protection that these
sensors would provide.

Hyundai de Puerto Rico is recalling 2,967 MY 2005-2007
Tucson vehicles. Static airbag deployment testing conducted
by NHTSA using fifth percentile female dummies indicated
that a small stature adult driver not wearing a seat belt
and involved in a frontal or near frontal crash, the
deployment of the driver air bag may result in an
insufficient margin of compliance as measured by the test
dummy used in the NHTSA test. This can cause increased risk
of injury to the driver under certain crash conditions.

June 2007

DaimlerChrysler is recalling 798 MY 2007-2008 Sebring and
MY 2008 Dodge Avenger vehicles. The front seat track
position sensors utilized for the air bag system may not
function properly. This could increase the risk of injury
to front seat occupants during certain crash conditions.

DaimlerChrysler is recalling 39 MY 2007 Dodge and
Freightliner Sprinter 2500 and 3500 trucks. The window
airbag module diffuser material may contain hairline
cracks. In the case of a crash with a trigger signal for
the window airbag module, it is possible that such a
diffuser may crack at the beginning of the airbag
activation.

As one can see from this small sampling of the defective
airbag recalls that have been instituted either voluntarily
by auto makers, or at the insistence of the NHTSA, there
are many occasions in which one or many of the airbags
installed in a vehicle will not operate as intended and
therefore be a defective airbag that might cause an airbag
failure in an accident.


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