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Since 1978, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been testing the frontal crash protection provided by new cars in the United States. In the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), vehicles are crashed into a stationary, full width, rigid barrier at 35 mi/h (56 km/h). Occupant protection is measured by comparing accelerations, forces, and deflections experienced by the head, chest, and upper legs of 50th percentile male Hybrid II or III anthropometric dummies restrained in the driver and right front seat passenger positions. The procedures are similar to those specified in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, except that the speed is 5 mi/h faster resulting in a test that requires the car to manage 36 percent more energy.

Using data from the National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System (NASS/CDS) for1995-96, this study updates previous analyses of driver fatalities in airbag-equipped vehicles in the NASS/CDS database for 1989-93 and 1989-94. A total of 59 cases of frontal crashes of airbag-equipped vehicles with driver fatalities were identified in these 8 years of NASS/CDS data, but in 9 cases the fatalities were not related to the impacts (e.g., fire, medical condition). Vehicle intrusion was the cause of the fatal injuries in 27 cases, and 7drivers died from injuries sustained when they were either partially or totally ejected from their vehicles. There was one case in which the airbag did not deploy, although the crash conditions indicated it should have. One driver died from contact with a nonintruding vehicle surface, and the causes of the fatal injuries in 5 cases were unknown.

A review of 39 driver fatalities in 1990-93 cars with air bags from the National Accident Sampling System indicated most of these fatalities were due to causes unrelated to frontal air bag performance. Two-thirds occurred in side-impact or rollover crashes, in which air bag effectiveness is limited; of 15 frontal crash fatalities, 6 died of causes unrelated to the frontal impact and 5 in cars with severe intrusion. The remaining four fatalities, three of whom were unbelted, were in moderate to high severity crashes which could have been survivable; however the deploying air bags, instead of protecting, probably contributed to the fatal injuries. A similar review of 12 fatalities of unbelted drivers in cars without air bags revealed 3 could have been prevented by air bags, but 4 were in crashes that could have put them in position to be injured by the air bag.

Air bags have proven to be effective in preventing deaths and serious injuries; however, in some instances when an occupant contacts an air bag while it is still deploying, injuries may result from this contact. Most of these are minor injuries, such as skin abrasions, which are believed to be caused by the contact pressure created by the deploying air bag surface. To assess the relative potential of different air bag designs to cause skin abrasions, a series of static deployment tests was conducted to measure the leading-edge speed of driver-side air bags from several 1993 model cars. The results of the tests indicate that air bags exhibit a wide range of leading-edge speeds and that, in some cases, maximum leading-edge speed is a highly variable characteristic among air bags from the same model car. Maximum leading edge speeds ranged from 171 to 328 km/h.