August 16, 2002
Air bags offer little protection to unrestrained passengers and may endanger young children
Air bags were initially designed to protect an unbelted adult male in a 30 mph crash. But do air bags protect a child passenger? And are air bags really effective in protecting unrestrained adults?
Air bags reduce the overall risk of passenger death in all crashes by 12 percent, but for some passengers – including young children – air bags may increase the overall risk of death. These findings are based on a study by researchers at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center (HIPRC), to be published in the September issue of Epidemiology.
The researchers used data from crashes on U.S. public roads between 1992 and 1998. In the crashes they studied, 20,987 front-seat passengers died, and 69,227 survived. The researchers explored differences in air-bag effectiveness by age, as well as estimating effects for both belt and unbelted passengers.
While air bags reduced the risk of death by 21 percent for restrained passengers in crashes, air bags afforded no protection against death for those passengers who weren’t wearing seat belts. Air bags were associated with a net increase in the risk of death among children ages 12 and under.
Because the effect of air bags may be related to passenger age, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ruled in 1997 that vehicle owners can have a switch installed to deactivate a passenger air bag. The agency also advised that children younger than 13 years old should ride in the rear seat.
“Although air bags were intended to offer protection to passengers who aren’t restrained, we found that they may be a hazard to unrestrained children and offer little benefit to unrestrained adults,” says Dr. Peter Cummings, the HIPRC study’s principal investigator and a University of Washington (UW) professor of epidemiology. “These results support the conclusion that children younger than 13 years who sit in front of an air bag are at increased risk of dying in a crash.”
Knowing whether children will ride in the front seat passenger position may help vehicle owners decide whether to install air-bar deactivation switches, the researchers say. Sometimes it isn’t possible to put a child in the rear seat because the vehicle may lack a rear seat or that seat is already filled with other children.
In addition to Cummings, the investigators were Dr. Thomas Koepsell, a UW professor of epidemiology; Dr. Fred Rivara, a UW professor of pediatrics and adjunct professor of epidemiology; Barbara McKnight, Ph.D., a UW professor of biostatistics; and Christopher Mack, M.S., HIPRC research consultant.
