Please send any
comments to: ncsaweb@nhtsa.dot.gov
More than 1,200 air bag investigations have been conducted to date, about
50 per year. The SCI program established a census of the early air
bag vehicle crashes which played a pivotal role in the establishment of Federal
Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208. Due to the rapid growth of air
bag equipped vehicles into the marketplace in 1988, the program shifted gears
from investigation of each air bag vehicle crash to investigating special
interest cases involving such issues as non-deployment crashes, air bag related
injuries, interaction with child safety seats, and new air bag equipped vehicles
crashes. These SCI air bag cases have been utilized by the agency and
the automotive safety community to understand the real world performance
of their state-of-the-art systems, and have been instrumental in influencing
subsequent changes to a number of production air bag systems.
Summary tables of air bag related fatalities and injuries are available.
Thirty-nine school bus crash investigations have been conducted to
date. Included in this count are incidents of children being killed or injured
as they enter or exit the loading zone. These cases are a useful tool
to NHTSA in assessing the real world performance of conventional, transit,
and van-based school bus crashworthiness and crash avoidance issues.
Such issues have included mirror systems, hand rail designs, video monitoring
of pupils, safety belt use, and joint strength.
The SCI program's flexibility allows for the detailed investigation of any
new emerging technologies related to automotive safety. A number of
incidents involving alternative fuel vehicles, passenger side air bag
deployments, vehicle-to-pedestrian impacts, and child safety restraints have
been investigated. As was the case with the early SCI air bag
investigations, these anecdotal investigations will be utilized by NHTSA
and the automotive safety community to understand the real world performance
of these state-of-the-art systems, and will result in increased safety from
subsequent second and third generation improvements to these new technologies.
Please send any
comments to: ncsaweb@nhtsa.dot.gov