The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), USA estimates more than 28,000 people survived vehicle crashes and are still alive due to the presence of frontal airbags in their vehicles as of 1 January 2009. This data has been accrued over time from crashes and fatalities on America’s highways and side streets. This paper will examine these statistics and compare information with this data.
Air bags for drivers made first appearances in certain 1985 models. From 1987-1990, automatic protection for occupants was gradually phased in by the NHTSA . However, air bags were not mandatory during this period. Any automatic occupant protection system was allowed that satisfied the requirements set by the NHTSA. Automatic seatbelts and airbags both were the systems.
It was explained by the agency that combining 3-point belts, buckled correctly with an air-bag gives the occupant the highest safety. Following this information there was immediate public support for belts over automatic safety belts. In 1990, the number of cars fitted with air-bags was sold was in the millions. By 1993, most new cars were fitted with air bags for the drivers and dual air bags by the end of 1994. By 1995, most of the new light trucks sold were fitted with either driver air-bags or dual ones providing safety for the passenger as well. Every new car was required to be fitted with twin air-bags as well as manually operated 3-point safety belts in 1998, and this was carried out for all light trucks manufactured in 1999 as well.
This study presents a statistical analysis carried out on the basis of NHTSA records of 7933 accidents in 1996 and more recent studies. The results are based on data from FARS covering years 1986 through 2009. This dis...
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...als of Epidemiology 20:499-510.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2009) “Special Crash Investigations – Counts of frontal air bag related fatalities and seriously injured persons”, Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, (1996) “NHTSA Technical Report “Fatality Reduction by Air Bags;Analyses of Accident Data through Early 1996” Technical Report No.DOT HS 808 470 August 1996
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, (1992)”Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Occupant Protection: Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, Interim Report. Technical Report No. DOT HS 807 843, Washington:
Evans, Leonard (1986) "Double Pair Comparison - A New Method to Determine How Occupant Characteristics Affect Fatality Risk in Traffic Crashes." Accident Analysis and Prevention, 18 (June 1986).
In a car crash, the more weight there is, the risk of injuries drops (Williams, May Twenty-second, 2015). In most semi truck accidents (about seventy percent of semi truck accidents), when only the semi truck and trailer alone are involved, there are no deaths. But when another vehicle (such as a car, van, or pickup truck ) is involved, about ninety-eight percent of the time there is at least one fatality, which is really low compared to some other means of transportation (such as a train or an airplane) (EJustice, 2012).
...ility of the experimental method is somewhat limited in that some outcomes cannot generalize into real world outcomes. The design method used was also expensive, since there are several pieces of equipment and tools that were required to complete the study. Further, the reliability of the study is limited in that it failed to identify and analyze the relative import of other factors that could lead to fatal accidents, such as localized infrastructure deficiencies. (DAlessio, Stolzenberg and Terry, Clinton, 1999).
"CDC -Injury - Teen Drivers: Fact Sheet." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 23 Mar. 2010. .
In 1966, the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB) was designed by the Highway Act. NHSB’s director, Dr. William Haddon, noticed that he could prevent motor-vehicle injuries by applying public health methods and epidemiology. Various passages demanded the government to set standards for the highway and motor vehicles. The federal government responded by developing new safety features in cars such as safety belts, head rests, and shatter-resistant windshields. Barriers, reflectors, and center line strips were placed on roadways to provide direction and illumination. Traffic safety laws, wearing a safety belt, and public education encouraged drivers to make safer decisions. The use of safety belts has skyrocketed from 11% in 1981 to 68% in 1997 and decreases When the community and government understood the necessity for motor-vehicle safety, various programs such as Prior to the implementation, the rate stood at 18 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 1925; however, the rate stood at 1.7 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 1997. With all of the new safety features with cars, public education and enforcement of safety laws, “motor-vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States.” Over 23.9 million vehicle crashes were reported in 1997; estimated costs were around $200 billion.
Current seat belt law originated from federal legislation in the 1960s that made it mandatory for all automobile manufacturers to include seat belts in their vehicles as a standard feature. Originally, the purpose of a seat belt was not to protect the occupants in the case of a crash, but rather to physically keep them in the vehicle, as driving was bumpy business.
"What Type of Crash Is Usually the Most Deadliest?" Car SeatOrg Carseat Automobile Child Passenger Safety Community Forums RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.
Different ideas and creative thinking towards the prevention or lessening of damage to the body can play just as large of a role as research on repairing that trauma. Research has been conducted in the United Kingdom on the prevalence of chest trauma. From January 1998 to January 2003; the findings presented the information, “Over the six-year period, out of 25,467 trauma patients admitted in our institution there were 1,164 (five percent) patients with at least one chest injury” (Veysi, 2009). Out of those 1,164 patients with at least one chest injury, fifty-seven percent of the those patients sustained the injury due to some form of mechanical vehicle accident (Veysi, 2009). “From the fifty-seven percent of patients, nineteen percent were pedestrians, seventeen percent were drivers of a motor vehicle, and nine percent were motorcyclists” (Veysi, 2009). The majority of cases where a patient receives some form of thoracic trauma are due to vehicle accidents, meaning they were preventable in one way or another. With new technologies and the general population abiding the laws of the road, motor vehicle accidents that cause serious harm the driver or a pedestrian can be
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for United States teens.1 In the first month of driving for a teen their crash risk is particularly high.5,6 Fourteen percent of the U.S. population is represented by young people of the ages fifteen to twenty. However they account for thirty percent (Nineteen billion dollars) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among males, and twenty-eight percent (Seven billion dollars) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among females. In 2012, two thousand eight hundred and twenty-three teenagers, between the ages of thirteen to nineteen, died in the United States from crash injuries.2 Seventy-nine percent of teenagers killed in crashes in 2012 were...
Richard Petty once said “You’ll got home safe, so drive safe, and stay safe.” Being a racing legend, he is an advocate for safe driving to minimise the cases of road crushes that have been on the rise. He double up as the chairman of the Veterans’ Safe Driving Initiative, the initiative is aimed at guiding the veterans returning from deployment on safe driving tips. It is necessarily important since the infrastructure has changed over time. Another initiative is being run in Minnesota where the teens are guided on the important safe driving tips. Study shows that more crushes are likely to occur in teen driving than veteran driving. It is also evident that young drivers are more likely to cause a crush within six months of passing the driving test and young male are worse than the females in the field.
Car accidents are the leading cause of death for people under the age of 35. Wearing a seat belt can prevent death in about half of these accidents. Did you know that every 15 seconds someone is injured in an automobile accident if they are not buckled up, or that every 13 minutes someone is killed in a crash. Failure to wear a seat belt contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety related behavior. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration seatbelts saved nearly 12,000 lives in the United States in the year 2000. The NHTSA estimates that more than 9,000 U.S. car accident fatalities in 2000 would have been avoided if the victims had been wearing seatbelts. Sixty three percent of the people killed in accidents were not wearing seat belts. The NHTSA a...
After thousands of accidents where the occupants did not wear their seatbelts, the Supreme Court decided to pass some laws. “In 1972, the agency requires dull passive restraints for front seat occupants” (Supreme Court). The agency that the Supreme Court is referring to is the Department of Transportation. This law is a staple in automobile safety and sets a level of precedent for future laws. After this law was passed, the number of fatalities from traffic incidents relating to seat belts usage had dropped.
U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (1999). Air Bags and On-Off Switches. Retrieved on September 25, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/airbags/brochure.com
Based on available resources, 40000 people die each year in car accidents. This figure is an intimidating figure because it show the occurrence of death in a crash. In this accident, the leading cause of death is people under the age of 35 years old. Safety belts can prevent death in about half of these accident.
The journey from that idea and the airbags that we have now has been very long. Today, airbags are a necessary in every car and are designed to act as an extra safety device aside of seat belts. But a lot of people are looking quite sceptical at the air bag safety, because there was a lot of accidents where the airbag didn’t react or it did react, but it didn’t help but killed the driver or the passenger. Since 1991 there was 238 counted just because of air
This report is based upon extensive library and internet research as well as an interview with Zaman Qamar, performance engineer at General Motors. He is one of the team members for crash and safety department which deals with accidental issues during severe crash.