The Truth About Airbags

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the traffic light, it had turned red (Dowd 136). He did not have time to stop and collided with another minivan waiting to turn left (Dowd 136). In a blink of an eye both airbags were inflated (Dowd 136). Robert, a little stunned, began to worry about the damage to his new minivan (Dowd 136). Next, he realized that Alison was not moving and was positioned sideways in her seat (Dowd 136). The doctors told Robert that Alison was brain-dead as soon as the bag made contact with her head (Dowd 136). She died at the age of seven (Dowd 136).
The airbags we use now were designed for a time when only about fifteen percent of the driving population wore seat belts; about seventy percent of drivers today buckle up, so it would be safe to make airbags with a less powerful punch (Vlasic 41). The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is asking automakers to reduce the deployment pressure of airbags by twenty to thirty percent (“The Quest for the Friendlier Airbag” 128). ...

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in the front seat; and, if a child must sit in the front, move the seat as far back as possible.
One way the manufacturers are trying to keep an airbag from killing children is to install on and off switches. This would allow parents to manually activate or deactivate the passenger side airbag. Parents could activate it when other adults were in the passenger seat and turn it off when a child was there. Lights on the dash would tell the driver if their air bag was turned on or off (Siuru 31). Even though the NHTSA has accepted the on and off switch, most dealerships will not allow their mechanics to work on airbags because of liability problems (Carbonara 131). Based on NHTSA statistics, ...

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