Study: Side air bags save livesSafety devices that offer head protection prevent even more crash deaths each year.David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Side air bags that provide head protection reduce driver deaths 37 percent, while side air bags that protect only the chest and abdomen reduce deaths 26 percent, a study released today found.
The study, by the Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, also found that side air bags are especially helpful in SUV accidents, with head-protecting side air bags reducing the risk of death 52 percent and torso air bags 30 percent.
After frontal crashes, side-impact crashes are the most deadly, killing about 9,300 people nationwide annually.
They accounted for 29 percent of all passenger vehicle occupant deaths in 2005, according to the study.
The institute's president, Adrian Lund, said consumers shouldn't buy vehicles without side air bags.
"If you care about safety, you need side impact protection," Lund said.
As many as 2,000 lives could be saved a year with side air bags if they were included in all vehicles, said Anne McCartt, a vice president at the institute and co-author of the study. The institute is funded by the insurance industry and lobbies automakers to improve safety features.
In December 2003, major automakers signed a seven-page voluntary agreement with the Insurance Institute, promising by September 2009 to offer improved side impact protection for drivers and passengers' heads. Under the agreement, the automakers annually report their progress to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
NHTSA and most automakers interpret the voluntary agreement -- which sets safety standards -- as requiring them to install side head protection air bags. The Big 3 have all promised to have side air bags by September 2009.
In early September, former NHTSA administrator Jeffrey Runge criticized the NHTSA for failing to mandate improved side impact protection.
"We're leaving 1,000 lives on the table. I can't defend the fact that this isn't done yet," Runge told The Detroit News in an interview. "This is clear when 50 percent of the people who die in a side-impact crash have a brain injury. There's no excuse to not get this done. This is a no-brainer -- no pun intended."
The Insurance Institute analysis of lives saved with side air bags is twice as high as the NHTSA's estimate.
When NHTSA proposed a tougher side impact standard in March 2004, it said it would save between 700 and 1,000 lives annually and said the "upgrade could become a final rule as early as 2005."
NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson declined to comment Wednesday on why the rule hasn't yet been completed.
The institute said 78 percent of cars and 53 percent of SUVs have head protection side air bags available as an option. Fewer than half of all pickup trucks have side air bags as an option. Head-protecting side air bags are only standard on one 2006 pickup model.
Among the Big Three:
· Ford Motor Co. is making side head air bags standard on 50 percent of its 2007 models.
"Ford is moving aggressively to make side air bags and air curtains, which help protect drivers and passengers in side-impact collisions, standard equipment," Ford spokesman Dan Jarvis said.
· Chrysler Group said 54 percent of its 2007 model year vehicles will be equipped with side air bags. That figure climbs to 90 percent in the 2008 model year, spokesman Max Gates said.
· Among GM vehicles, 52 percent of 2007 model year vehicles will have side curtain air bags, said spokesman Alan Adler. About 44 percent of the SUVs will have them.
GM is also making rollover air bags standard on all trucks by 2010.
"This isn't one of those options that you want to wait for people to demand," Adler said.
The 2004 NHTSA proposal would cost automakers as much as $3.6 billion -- from $91 to $208 per vehicle, costing as much as $3.7 million industrywide per life saved.
