Back Seat Airbags

1
Back Seat Airbags

• Innovation
• Matt Keating, Skylar Wilson, Andrew Richards,
  Alex Saint Germain
• November 29, 2005

2
Problem to be eliminated

• The main problem we are trying to eliminate is
  death from car accidents.
• When people are sitting in the back seat, they
  are likely to bang their head against the seat in
  front of them, causing death or serious injury.
• We also want to try and stop or decrease the
  number of head and neck injuries of people in the
  backseats of cars.

3
Safety Improvement

• To further improve car safety, we suggest the
  introduction of backseat airbags.
• The addition of backseat airbags would make cars
  much safer than they are today.
• It would prevent people in the backseat from
  banging their heads, thus reducing the number of
  deaths and injuries each year from car accidents.

4
How it works

• The airbag system will be similar to the ones
  that already exist in the front of cars.
• There will be a thin fabric folded into the back
  of the driver and passenger seats. Inside the
  fabric is a sensor which causes the bag to go off
  when it feels a force of 10 miles per hour.
• The sensor makes a switch flip allowing the bag
  to be deployed.

5
How it works continued

• The air bag is deployed when the bag fills with a
  propellant at a rate of 200 mph.
• After initially being deployed, the bag slowly
  deflates allowing the person to move.
• Instead of having it come from the steering wheel
  or the dashboard, as is the case in most new
  cars, the new airbags would be deployed from the
  back of the front seats.

6
Continued

• Most parents feel uncomfortable with letting
  their small children sit in the front seats.
• This is because they are afraid that the airbag
  is too powerful, and it would cause just as much
  or more harm then if there was no airbag.
• We would implement a switch to turn the airbags
  on or off in the backseat, depending on how the
  driver felt about the people in the backseat.
• If there were small children, then the airbags
  would probably be turned off, but if the kids
  were big enough, then the airbags would be safe
  enough to be turned on.

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Visual on How It Works
The inflation system uses a solid propellant and
an igniter.
The air bag and inflation system stored in the
steering wheel. This will be the same system and
bag, however it will be stored in the back of the
front seats.
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Drawbacks

• As is the case with all new improvements, there
  is some sort of drawback.
• In this case, the positives of this improvement
  outweigh the negatives, but there are still some
  drawbacks.
• For instance, there will be a greater risk of
  getting burned by the airbag, since there are
  such high temperature gases that are deployed
  into the airbag.
• Also, in low severity crashes, the airbag force
  is greater then the force of the collision, so
  when the airbag is deployed in those situations,
  there is a greater chance of injury due to the
  force of the airbag.

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Estimated Cost

• We estimated that nitrogen gas prices vary from 2
  cents to 2.75 per 100 cu ft (2.83 cu. Meters),
  depending on the purity.
• Each airbag unit requires only about .5 cubic ft.
  of nitrogen.
• 100 cu ft of nitrogen to fill 200 airbags.
• To fill 200 airbags with nitrogen would cost
  about 2.50.
• Labor cost to replace and airbag is roughly
  around 1,000 dollars depending on what type of
  car you have and other factors.

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• The cost of a driver only system is 278, and the
  cost of the dual system is 410.
• This represents about 2 of the total cost of an
  average 20, 000 car.
• To implement the system into the backseats would
  cost about an extra 400-500.

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Non-Monetary Cost

• The non-monetary value of this improvement is
  simple, it saves lives.
• Not only will it save lives, it will also reduce
  head and neck injuries.

12
Brainstorming

• As a group we took the task at hand and each put
  in our thoughts of what to do.
• The consensus was that the airbags would be best
  and we went from there.

13
Teamwork

• As a Team, we worked well together, and split the
  work up evenly.
• We each did a part of the paper and a part of the
  power point.

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Sources Used

• http//www.speclab.com/elements/nitrogen.htm
• www.howstuffworks.com
• www.medscape.com/viewarticle/490128
• www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/cars/rebuilt_air
  bags/whatcanido.html
• http//www.scienceservingsociety.com/ts/text/ch12.
  htm
• http//www.airbags-oem.com/inventory.html