![]() ![]() “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.” Peter Cummings, the HIPRC study’s principal investigator and a University of Washington (UW) professor of epidemiology. “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. The agency also advised that children younger than 13 years old should ride in the rear seat. Air bags were associated with a net increase in the risk of death among children ages 12 and under.īecause 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. 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. The researchers explored differences in air-bag effectiveness by age, as well as estimating effects for both belt and unbelted passengers. In the crashes they studied, 20,987 front-seat passengers died, and 69,227 survived. The researchers used data from crashes on U.S. 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. But do air bags protect a child passenger? And are air bags really effective in protecting unrestrained adults?Īir 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. Air bags were initially designed to protect an unbelted adult male in a 30 mph crash.
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