The Cash Trio

Few people realise that the conception of air bags – a soft cushion to impact against in a crash – has been around for over 60 years. The very first patent on an inflatable crash-landing device for airplanes was registered during World War 2. During the 1980s, the first commercial airbags were a safety feature in vehicles.

Up to the present day, statistics show that airbags cut the risk of death in a square anterior crash by as much as 30%. These days there are also door mounted side and seat-mounted air bags. In fact, some cars go way beyond simply having two air bags, and instead have 6 to 8 air bags.

The goal of an airbag is to slow the driver’s advanced movement as smoothly as possible in only a split second. There are three parts to an airbag that help execute this goal:

• The bag is composed of a slim, nylon, which is packed into the dashboard or steering wheel and, more recently, the door or seat
• The detector is the gadget that instructs the bag to inflate. Ballooning takes place when there’s a collision force equating to running into a brick wall at around 24 km per hour. A mechanical switch is flicked when there is a weight shift that closes an electrical contact, telling the detectors that a smash has happened. The detectors receive information from an accelerometer built into a silicon chip
• The airbag’s expansion facility combines sodium azide with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to make nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the gas expand the air bag

Due to the incredibly fast deployment of an air bag, it’s fundamental the driver and passenger sit in an upright position providing a reasonable space between their face and the steering wheel / dashboard – this leaves time for the airbag to inflate while they are being pushed forwards by the impact of the accident.