Sitting distance from airbag?

Sitting distance from airbag?

Author
Discussion

Prince Jefri

Original Poster:

1,971 posts

182 months

Friday 8th April 2011
quotequote all
Driving through London today I happened to stop at the traffic lights next to a Mondeo. The driver was a lady and she was incredibly close to the steering wheel. Her body was no more than 4 inches from the wheel and her chin was maybe 6 to 8 inches from the top of the wheel. Top of steering wheel was level with her nose!

If the airbag (for any reason) goes off, would she be looking at serious injury??

Vieste

10,532 posts

173 months

Friday 8th April 2011
quotequote all
Yeah she would get a busted hooter but nothing very serious.

Superhoop

4,744 posts

206 months

Friday 8th April 2011
quotequote all
Quite probably - she stands a very good chance of hitting the air bag before it's fully deployed - in the US, this type of incident has been responsible for a number of fatalities....

The idea of an air bag is that you hit it once full deployment has occurred, meaning it can cushion your head in an impact

Hitting the bag whilst it still deploying fires your head backwards at a fair rate of knots - this can cause the neck to break

Having said all of that, air bags in European cars have a small volume than US airbags, so might not be as severe

This is the main reason that 2 stage air bags were developed, which basically deploy in one of two different modes depending on the severity of the accident the vehicle is involved in