7 ms·

At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car saf

At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car safety for longer, and more effectively than the US has. Seat belts? Volvo. Air bags? First made standard in Mercs and Porsches, at a time when Ford and GM were lobbying against being made to include them. They became optional and then standard between the mid to late 90's, while legislation in the US made them a requirement in 98. Shaped airbags? Citroen. Side impact airbags? Volvo. Curtain airbags? BMW. The big difference though is the Euro NCAP ratings. It's near impossible to get a good score on them with just airbags, so the car manufacturers are forced to do more to score well, and it's become a solid marketing tool. On the other hand, FMVSS 208 (the American testing standard) are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, so fire far too hard, causing a lot of issues. Whilst they'll stop you dying, they'll cause huge trauma and other issues in doing so. EU car safety technology regulation and manufacturer incentivisation is just a long way ahead, and has been for nearly two decades. So it's not surprising when something like this comes out. [edit to include important side note] Never wear anything flammable with sleeves while driving. Airbags are small explosions and can set flammable clothing on fire, causing severe burns &| death. If you need to be warmer, turn on the heater. Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. You don't want to be trying to get out of a car after an accident with broken thumbs, which is what you get when the airbag deploys.

alkonaut 11y ago
> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!
- petewailes 11y ago
  It's because the legislation originates from a time when most cars didn't have them as a legal requirement, so the assumption is that someone won't have one or be wearing it, if the car has it. That bit has never been updated. It's exactly as insane as it sounds.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    I'm not sure but I think airbags do detonate on most cars, regardless of the seat belt status. It would be too complicated or unreliable to couple the two systems. However: an airbag isn't very effective (and could even be dangerous) without the seat belt, so manufacturers in Europe aren't really required to worry about the safety without seat belts. Effectively the safety regulations say: those with no seat belts are idiots breaking the law and it's not your job to worry about the safety those people. Which is completely sensible. I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...) BUT the reasonable thing to do would be to not force car manufacturers to make cars less safe for those who do wear seat belts.
    - petewailes 11y ago
      With regards to your first point, they do detonate. It's a question of how. The main difference is the force with which they go off. In Europe, it's assumed you're wearing a seatbelt, so the force is less, which results in a lower likelihood of injury, compared to a US airbag. Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you.
      - ska 11y ago
        Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you. The other way around is kind of insane - you increase the risk for everybody who is using their safety equipment properly, for the benefit of those who can't be bothered.
    - amatix 11y ago
      > I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...) Wat? So because the taxpayer isn't directly picking up the healthcare bill, it's somehow okay to double serious crash-related injuries and deaths[1]? [1] "Seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half." http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html
- kw71 11y ago
  I have two German-made, US-delivery cars with seatbelt switches and pressure mats (occupancy detection) in the passenger seats. I was hoping that this made them smarter than the Toyota and Volvo I own which have no such things wired into their airbag systems, which certainly work as described in this thread.
  - petewailes 11y ago
    I'm guessing here, so pinch of salt required etc... I think you're probably in something safer there. The idea behind airbag activation sensors is that you don't want to trigger unnecessary deployments (for a few reasons, but that's a bit involved). That said, depending on the system setup and what type of crash you have, alters which car I'd rather be in. TL;DR: don't crash.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    When buying French-made used cars, one of the important things is to check that the seatbelt switches, pressure mats and their connections are OK. Otherwise, extremely annoying and somewhat costly visits to a car electricity specialist will be needed... (This is necessary to pass the annual MOT test here, not just a safety concern - if the OBD interface reports any errors, the car is automatically rejected in the test. Other than that, used Citroëns seem to be fine.)
  - mzs 11y ago
    I want to clarify that in 2000 Volvo began selling cars in US with dual stage airbags (S80 at least) and by 2002 (in some cases MY03 cars though) all US Volvos had them for both front airbags. Dual stage does not mean having the seat weight sensor. That is what is part of what is termed advanced airbag system in US market. The Volvo system would inflate the airbag less or more rapidly based on force of collision and whether the seat was belted or not. You could have the dealer install a passenger side airbag lock-out though.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length. There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.
  - mootothemax 11y ago
    The same racing drivers who have to wear top-line racing helmets connected to HANS devices, wear fire-resistant overalls, have medical teams on immediate standby, and who are often strapped in by their mechanics before heading off? I think you may be overlooking an awful lot of what makes modern motor racing safer than it was in the past. (and that's ignoring the number of serious injuries and driver deaths that still occur thanks to freak accidents)
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      I'm looking at the kind of accidents where an airbag is supposed to be effective. An airbag will do nothing for you if the car is burning. The first and foremost safety device in a race car is the racing belt. The belt means you slow down with the car, which is much less deceleration than if your body hits the dashboard. (The point of crumple zones in the car is to reduced peak deceleration. In order for that to work, you gotta be strapped in.)
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - snowwrestler 11y ago
        An airbag allows the driver's head to experience even lower deceleration than the car, because it gives the head an extra 1-2 feet in which to decelerate--the distance between the upright position and smashed into the deployed airbag. When wearing a 5-point harness without a helmet and head restraint, the deceleration delta between the car and the head will be entirely borne by the structure of the neck, which is how Dale Earnhardt died.
Maarten88 11y ago
Well, the US car manufacturers must have been surprised. They commissioned the study, and must have thought they could spin the results to prove that the difference is negligible. My guess is the real difference is even bigger than this report shows.
userbinator 11y ago
I don't think the EU pushed Volvo though; for the longest time, their slogan was "Drive Safely" and they've always been emphasising safety over other features.
- petewailes 11y ago
  Correct. Volvo (and Saab too) were always and still are nuts about car safety. On a very related note, the Volvo Vision 2020 project: http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/roadsafe/unda/Sweden_Volvo_Vision_2020.pdf http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/roadsafe/unda/Swede... TL;DR: no-one should die or be seriously injured in a crash in a new Volvo by 2020 (two vehicle generations away from now). Mostly that's based on Gilb's first two Laws of Unreliability (computers are unreliable, but humans are far more so, and systems which depend on human reliability are by definition unreliable).
  - OopsCriticality 11y ago
    In Top Gear's tribute to Saab, Clarkson said that a senior designer friend at "another Sweedish car company" told him that no one could figure out why Saabs cost as much as they did, until they crash tested them.
DanBC 11y ago
> Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. The normal way of holding a steering wheel (thumb and forefinger forming an "O" around the wheel) may increase risk of minor wrist and hand injuries during small accidents. This probably isn't important for the general population, but for people who make a living with their hands it's worth mentioning. http://www.boneandjoint.org.uk/sites/default/files/FocusOn_ScaphoidFractures.pdf http://www.boneandjoint.org.uk/sites/default/files/FocusOn_S... > Less commonly, forced dorsiflexion against a steering wheel in a motor vehicle accident or a ball forcing the palm dorsally can cause a scaphoid fracture http://www.physio-pedia.com/Scaphoid_Fracture http://www.physio-pedia.com/Scaphoid_Fracture > Less common mechanisms of injury are: > wrist extension with deceleration such as with the hand on a steering wheel Although cupping the wheel with your hands may be more dangerous in other ways.
- mzs 11y ago
  I like the saying "thumbs-up for thumbs-out!" There's more to it than the airbag. In an accident the steering wheel can carry a lot of force. Frangible and later collapsible steering columns (and now common power steering) have alleviated by a lot but it is still quite a lot of force. You don't want just pushing or pulling vigorously on on the wheel or a huge pothole to affect it. In the time before airbags when these things were created it was more to prevent breaking too many ribs while impaling the driver. So anyway, problem to this day is that the wheel can wretch around by many degrees very rapidly in an accident. This can break a thumb or what not. So don't wrap your thumb around the wheel but have them more in a Fonzie thumbs-up jut off to the outside. In the time before airbags it was also recommended to take your hands off the wheel and have your forearms over your chest and chest and hands over face the moment you no longer had control and could not regain it before the impact. This protected your ribs and face. The advice now is to bring your hands up to your armpits without any crossing or covering in an airbag equipped car.
scrumper 11y ago
So does that mean if I buy a European car in the USA (a USA car, not a special import) the airbags will go off with more force?
chiph 11y ago
> are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt That's Joan Claybrook's fault. While she did champion many much-needed safety improvements, this and the 85-mph speedometer were not her best ideas. For the inside story on this and other auto industry disasters, pick up a copy of Jason Vines' book: http://www.amazon.com/What-Did-Jesus-Drive-Christianity-ebook/dp/B013PTUXAO http://www.amazon.com/What-Did-Jesus-Drive-Christianity-eboo... *I asked him, "What the hell is a thermal event?" "Um," he paused, "The vehicle could catch on fire."
mzs 11y ago
Rather than write many replies to those in this thread (often rehashing the same thing) I am going to reply here and address it all. There are many people claiming outdated info as current fact and misinterpreting what the differences actually imply in US v. EU occupant crash protection. Regarding the airbags. The US now requires advanced frontal airbags in all passenger cars and light trucks. It started phasing them in back in 2003. Moreover prior in 1997 the NHTSA permitted depowered airbags which rapidly became the norm. Here is a nice FAQ with more details: http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/Advanced+Frontal+Air+Bags http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/Advanced+F... Now for the gist and background: In the '70s GM pioneered research into airbags (as an aside the interior of the contemporary Volvo SCC which became the 240 simply looked like a bumper car instead https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12042626_10207667920518779_6625614908511727712_n.jpg?oh=feb6211b1933a4d6878c0142c6221973&oe=568FAABE https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12042626... ). In the world as a whole (not just US) seat belt use was dismal. So initially it was hoped that they could be used without seat belts. Since the original systems were so cumbersome (for example one of them used a bottle of compressed gas) and complicated (the original acceptable switches were wighted metal balls with rings of conductors and springs) it took quite a while for them to get developed to the point that they were acceptably reliable, safe, and priced. To give an example, one consideration not immediately obvious is how the head rebounds off the airbag and into what with how much force. It took quite a lot of development that is not appreciated my most people these days, very worthwhile effort which has saved and improved the quality of life for many. Yet by that point in time seat belt use was still abysmal in US. In some parts of Western Europe it was improving more rapidly. So policy was in US for the airbags to deploy faster and bigger (which might not be expected, but the reason is that the occupant might be not where you expect, for example sliding down into the footwell or about to be ejected from a window). The interesting aspect to this is that there is data that the US style was even better for belted adult occupants (of not small stature - more on that in a bit) in more severe accidents. This is because until the more recent advent of seat belt pretensioners and later knee bolsters it was common for occupants to slide under the steering wheel while braking or have their chest pulled in to closer than 10" from the air bag cover from same braking. One other thing to keep in mind is that air bags were seen as a supplemental restraint system due to the lack of seat belt use in US and the requirements were initially for there to be such an SRS in place (not necessarily airbags) for certain fleet percentages by certain dates. One unexpected result was that airbag fleet saturation was lower than predicted initially due to a fluke of history. Airbags by that point used explosive charges and there were a number of snafus in their manufacture initially related to that. Ford in particular was very hard hit but a number of European makes faced shortages as well. That shortage and changing US regulation were two more reason why Peugeot pulled-out of US market since they could not surmount in a profitable manner for example. This led to the proliferation of systems that would have the shoulder belt in place at all times. Chrysler in particular benefited greatly from dumb luck in that the suppliers it had picked did not have any factories blow-up essentially and even had marketing in place at the time touting how their cars had airbags while their competitors did not. Now back to short occupants: It was realized that the airbags were injuring or killing occupants in some cases early on. Again at that time seat belt use was still poor in US. So aftermarket airbag cut-off switches were permitted. There was also a process for having them certified for use. It was not uncommon for people that needed them (smaller drivers, those that needed to transport a child in the front, elderly, and so on) to have them installed at a dealer and shortly after that they became common place in US cars which were most likely to need them (such as pickups) as standard equipment.
_pmf_ 11y ago
To elaborate on NCAP: to reach the highest level of safetly in Europe, there are certain accident scenarios involving pedestrians where the safety of the pedestrian factors in (i.e. not only the passengers' ).

alkonaut 11y ago

> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!

petewailes 11y ago
It's because the legislation originates from a time when most cars didn't have them as a legal requirement, so the assumption is that someone won't have one or be wearing it, if the car has it. That bit has never been updated. It's exactly as insane as it sounds.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- alkonaut 11y ago
  I'm not sure but I think airbags do detonate on most cars, regardless of the seat belt status. It would be too complicated or unreliable to couple the two systems. However: an airbag isn't very effective (and could even be dangerous) without the seat belt, so manufacturers in Europe aren't really required to worry about the safety without seat belts. Effectively the safety regulations say: those with no seat belts are idiots breaking the law and it's not your job to worry about the safety those people. Which is completely sensible. I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...) BUT the reasonable thing to do would be to not force car manufacturers to make cars less safe for those who do wear seat belts.
  - petewailes 11y ago
    With regards to your first point, they do detonate. It's a question of how. The main difference is the force with which they go off. In Europe, it's assumed you're wearing a seatbelt, so the force is less, which results in a lower likelihood of injury, compared to a US airbag. Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you.
    - ska 11y ago
      Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you. The other way around is kind of insane - you increase the risk for everybody who is using their safety equipment properly, for the benefit of those who can't be bothered.
  - amatix 11y ago
    > I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...) Wat? So because the taxpayer isn't directly picking up the healthcare bill, it's somehow okay to double serious crash-related injuries and deaths[1]? [1] "Seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half." http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html
kw71 11y ago
I have two German-made, US-delivery cars with seatbelt switches and pressure mats (occupancy detection) in the passenger seats. I was hoping that this made them smarter than the Toyota and Volvo I own which have no such things wired into their airbag systems, which certainly work as described in this thread.
- petewailes 11y ago
  I'm guessing here, so pinch of salt required etc... I think you're probably in something safer there. The idea behind airbag activation sensors is that you don't want to trigger unnecessary deployments (for a few reasons, but that's a bit involved). That said, depending on the system setup and what type of crash you have, alters which car I'd rather be in. TL;DR: don't crash.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  When buying French-made used cars, one of the important things is to check that the seatbelt switches, pressure mats and their connections are OK. Otherwise, extremely annoying and somewhat costly visits to a car electricity specialist will be needed... (This is necessary to pass the annual MOT test here, not just a safety concern - if the OBD interface reports any errors, the car is automatically rejected in the test. Other than that, used Citroëns seem to be fine.)
- mzs 11y ago
  I want to clarify that in 2000 Volvo began selling cars in US with dual stage airbags (S80 at least) and by 2002 (in some cases MY03 cars though) all US Volvos had them for both front airbags. Dual stage does not mean having the seat weight sensor. That is what is part of what is termed advanced airbag system in US market. The Volvo system would inflate the airbag less or more rapidly based on force of collision and whether the seat was belted or not. You could have the dealer install a passenger side airbag lock-out though.
WalterBright 11y ago
I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length. There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.
- mootothemax 11y ago
  The same racing drivers who have to wear top-line racing helmets connected to HANS devices, wear fire-resistant overalls, have medical teams on immediate standby, and who are often strapped in by their mechanics before heading off? I think you may be overlooking an awful lot of what makes modern motor racing safer than it was in the past. (and that's ignoring the number of serious injuries and driver deaths that still occur thanks to freak accidents)
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I'm looking at the kind of accidents where an airbag is supposed to be effective. An airbag will do nothing for you if the car is burning. The first and foremost safety device in a race car is the racing belt. The belt means you slow down with the car, which is much less deceleration than if your body hits the dashboard. (The point of crumple zones in the car is to reduced peak deceleration. In order for that to work, you gotta be strapped in.)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      An airbag allows the driver's head to experience even lower deceleration than the car, because it gives the head an extra 1-2 feet in which to decelerate--the distance between the upright position and smashed into the deployed airbag. When wearing a 5-point harness without a helmet and head restraint, the deceleration delta between the car and the head will be entirely borne by the structure of the neck, which is how Dale Earnhardt died.

Maarten88 11y ago

Well, the US car manufacturers must have been surprised. They commissioned the study, and must have thought they could spin the results to prove that the difference is negligible. My guess is the real difference is even bigger than this report shows.

userbinator 11y ago

I don't think the EU pushed Volvo though; for the longest time, their slogan was "Drive Safely" and they've always been emphasising safety over other features.

petewailes 11y ago
Correct. Volvo (and Saab too) were always and still are nuts about car safety. On a very related note, the Volvo Vision 2020 project: http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/roadsafe/unda/Sweden_Volvo_Vision_2020.pdf http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/roadsafe/unda/Swede... TL;DR: no-one should die or be seriously injured in a crash in a new Volvo by 2020 (two vehicle generations away from now). Mostly that's based on Gilb's first two Laws of Unreliability (computers are unreliable, but humans are far more so, and systems which depend on human reliability are by definition unreliable).
- OopsCriticality 11y ago
  In Top Gear's tribute to Saab, Clarkson said that a senior designer friend at "another Sweedish car company" told him that no one could figure out why Saabs cost as much as they did, until they crash tested them.

DanBC 11y ago

> Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. The normal way of holding a steering wheel (thumb and forefinger forming an "O" around the wheel) may increase risk of minor wrist and hand injuries during small accidents. This probably isn't important for the general population, but for people who make a living with their hands it's worth mentioning. http://www.boneandjoint.org.uk/sites/default/files/FocusOn_ScaphoidFractures.pdf http://www.boneandjoint.org.uk/sites/default/files/FocusOn_S... > Less commonly, forced dorsiflexion against a steering wheel in a motor vehicle accident or a ball forcing the palm dorsally can cause a scaphoid fracture http://www.physio-pedia.com/Scaphoid_Fracture http://www.physio-pedia.com/Scaphoid_Fracture > Less common mechanisms of injury are: > wrist extension with deceleration such as with the hand on a steering wheel Although cupping the wheel with your hands may be more dangerous in other ways.

mzs 11y ago
I like the saying "thumbs-up for thumbs-out!" There's more to it than the airbag. In an accident the steering wheel can carry a lot of force. Frangible and later collapsible steering columns (and now common power steering) have alleviated by a lot but it is still quite a lot of force. You don't want just pushing or pulling vigorously on on the wheel or a huge pothole to affect it. In the time before airbags when these things were created it was more to prevent breaking too many ribs while impaling the driver. So anyway, problem to this day is that the wheel can wretch around by many degrees very rapidly in an accident. This can break a thumb or what not. So don't wrap your thumb around the wheel but have them more in a Fonzie thumbs-up jut off to the outside. In the time before airbags it was also recommended to take your hands off the wheel and have your forearms over your chest and chest and hands over face the moment you no longer had control and could not regain it before the impact. This protected your ribs and face. The advice now is to bring your hands up to your armpits without any crossing or covering in an airbag equipped car.

scrumper 11y ago

So does that mean if I buy a European car in the USA (a USA car, not a special import) the airbags will go off with more force?

chiph 11y ago

> are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt That's Joan Claybrook's fault. While she did champion many much-needed safety improvements, this and the 85-mph speedometer were not her best ideas. For the inside story on this and other auto industry disasters, pick up a copy of Jason Vines' book: http://www.amazon.com/What-Did-Jesus-Drive-Christianity-ebook/dp/B013PTUXAO http://www.amazon.com/What-Did-Jesus-Drive-Christianity-eboo... *I asked him, "What the hell is a thermal event?" "Um," he paused, "The vehicle could catch on fire."

mzs 11y ago

Rather than write many replies to those in this thread (often rehashing the same thing) I am going to reply here and address it all. There are many people claiming outdated info as current fact and misinterpreting what the differences actually imply in US v. EU occupant crash protection. Regarding the airbags. The US now requires advanced frontal airbags in all passenger cars and light trucks. It started phasing them in back in 2003. Moreover prior in 1997 the NHTSA permitted depowered airbags which rapidly became the norm. Here is a nice FAQ with more details: http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/Advanced+Frontal+Air+Bags http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/Advanced+F... Now for the gist and background: In the '70s GM pioneered research into airbags (as an aside the interior of the contemporary Volvo SCC which became the 240 simply looked like a bumper car instead https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12042626_10207667920518779_6625614908511727712_n.jpg?oh=feb6211b1933a4d6878c0142c6221973&oe=568FAABE https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12042626... ). In the world as a whole (not just US) seat belt use was dismal. So initially it was hoped that they could be used without seat belts. Since the original systems were so cumbersome (for example one of them used a bottle of compressed gas) and complicated (the original acceptable switches were wighted metal balls with rings of conductors and springs) it took quite a while for them to get developed to the point that they were acceptably reliable, safe, and priced. To give an example, one consideration not immediately obvious is how the head rebounds off the airbag and into what with how much force. It took quite a lot of development that is not appreciated my most people these days, very worthwhile effort which has saved and improved the quality of life for many. Yet by that point in time seat belt use was still abysmal in US. In some parts of Western Europe it was improving more rapidly. So policy was in US for the airbags to deploy faster and bigger (which might not be expected, but the reason is that the occupant might be not where you expect, for example sliding down into the footwell or about to be ejected from a window). The interesting aspect to this is that there is data that the US style was even better for belted adult occupants (of not small stature - more on that in a bit) in more severe accidents. This is because until the more recent advent of seat belt pretensioners and later knee bolsters it was common for occupants to slide under the steering wheel while braking or have their chest pulled in to closer than 10" from the air bag cover from same braking. One other thing to keep in mind is that air bags were seen as a supplemental restraint system due to the lack of seat belt use in US and the requirements were initially for there to be such an SRS in place (not necessarily airbags) for certain fleet percentages by certain dates. One unexpected result was that airbag fleet saturation was lower than predicted initially due to a fluke of history. Airbags by that point used explosive charges and there were a number of snafus in their manufacture initially related to that. Ford in particular was very hard hit but a number of European makes faced shortages as well. That shortage and changing US regulation were two more reason why Peugeot pulled-out of US market since they could not surmount in a profitable manner for example. This led to the proliferation of systems that would have the shoulder belt in place at all times. Chrysler in particular benefited greatly from dumb luck in that the suppliers it had picked did not have any factories blow-up essentially and even had marketing in place at the time touting how their cars had airbags while their competitors did not. Now back to short occupants: It was realized that the airbags were injuring or killing occupants in some cases early on. Again at that time seat belt use was still poor in US. So aftermarket airbag cut-off switches were permitted. There was also a process for having them certified for use. It was not uncommon for people that needed them (smaller drivers, those that needed to transport a child in the front, elderly, and so on) to have them installed at a dealer and shortly after that they became common place in US cars which were most likely to need them (such as pickups) as standard equipment.

_pmf_ 11y ago

To elaborate on NCAP: to reach the highest level of safetly in Europe, there are certain accident scenarios involving pedestrians where the safety of the pedestrian factors in (i.e. not only the passengers' ).