Air Bag Progress Report 3:

        Going back into the person file of the FARS data base for 2008, we impose the following conditions on the filter: Vehicle occupants only, no seatbelt used, initial and principal impact at 12 o'clock (front end). We choose these criteria because they most closely approximate the criterea assumed by the air bag videos put out by NHTSA and IIHS and because this is where the risk of a driver or passenger being struck by an airbag while it is still expanding is most plausible. Few of these, however, duplicate the conditions shown in the videos because the videos show head-on collisions; i.e., the driver or passenger is thrown forward in the axial or longitudinal direction of the vehicle. NHTSA stopped publishing the figures for fatal head-on collisions as a separate category after 2001 because there were so few of them - fewer than 14% of fatal collisions and fewer than 2% of all collisions are head-on collisions. That does not mean that 14% of fatal collisions correspond the the conditions shown in the videos, because the videos show no crush in the passenger compartment. In all of the fatal head-on collisions listed in the FARS data base, the vehicle was severely crushed. Thus, based not only on the FARS data base, but on numerous accident reports, photographs, eye witness acounts and engineering analyses,  none, repeat none, of the actual, fatal head-on collisions correspond to the conditions shown in the dummy tests.
        Since all of NHTSA's ploys were based on the assumption of a head-on collision (and no crush in the passenger compartment)  they lumped head-on collisions  into a category which they called "front end collisions", hoping that people would be too dumb to know the difference. But front end collisions can be at any angle. Cars are even less resistant to crush in angle collisions than in head-on collisions. The dominant factor in any serious front end collision is not the driver being driven towards the front of the car, but the front of the car being driven towards the driver. (See above video). The FARS data base does not give us the angles because if it did we would know once again how few were axial. Based on the earlier data, however, it is safe to assume that most of these collisions are angle collisions. For two vehicles to be perfectly aligned requires some coincidence. Nevertheless, front-end angle collisions will have an axial component of deceleration which may trigger the air bag, and the crush will drive the air bag towards the driver.   As we shall see in a subsequent report, it is not necessary for the vehicle to have an axial deceleration component to trigger the air bag. Air bags can be triggered by shock, elevated temperature or static electricity, meaning that the only way to be safe from air bags is to remove them from the vehicle. It is not enough to merely disconnect them.

Using the above criterea, we filtered further to determine the number of occupants cited where an air bag deployed and where it did not deploy, and how many were killed or not killed in each case. Bear in mind that these are only occupants involved in fatal accidents, based on the way the FARS data base selects persons for inclusion (see previous report). Here are the results:

Number of occupants where an air bag deployed................................................................................3,493

Number killed where an air bag deployed.............................................................................................2,453

Percent killed where an air bag deployed................................................................................................70%

Number of occupants where an air bag did not deploy........................................................................6,945

Number killed where an air bag did not deploy.....................................................................................4,126

Percent killed where an air bag did not deploy:........................................................................................59%

Number who would have been killed where an air bag deployed if the percent had been 59%........2061

Difference....................................................................................................................392

The figure of 392 who were probably killed by their air bags in front end collisions leaves open the question of how the remaining 1892 could have been killed by their air bags (see air bag progress report 2). There are five ways this could have happened. The first is that the video cited in the Airbag theory technical note (see below) shows that the air bag deploys first longitudinally and only subsequently in the lateral direction. The video shows that the air bag reaches out 18 inches before settling back to 15 inches. Thus, a driver may be struck by the air bag even if he is not thrown forward, depending on how far from the steering wheel he is sitting. The air bag is like a whip or snake striking out at speeds up to 217 feet per second. In some later model air bags this issue has been addressed by reenforcing the air bag longitudinally but not laterally, but it is not clear how many have been modified in this way, and many of the older bags are still out there.

The second is that the air bag may deploy accidentally while the driver is driving down the street or highway. This would almost certainly cause the driver to lose control of his vehicle and may cause a serious accident. Such a deployment may be caused either by shock or by an accidental electrical discharge due to static electricity, an electrical short, or a computer malfunction. Any engineer with experience in mass production and quality control knows that this is bound to happen in a small percentage of cases, but a small percentage of over a hundred million is still a large number, expecially to the people it happens to. As we have shown in air bag progress report 4, sodium azide is sensitive to shock and could be set off by hitting a severe bump, rock or other obstacle in the road, especially if the vehicle is travelling at high speed.

As we shall show in a subsequent report, there are numerous cases of front air bags being set off by side impact, and even rear end collisions, proving that they can be set off by shock. In fact, there is no proof that air bags are actually detonated by their accelerometers at all, and not by shock in any collisions. The problem is that the accelerometer would be among the first things destroyed in a front end collision, since it is usually located at or near the very front of the vehicle, but whether that happens before or after it sets off the air bag no one knows. If the air bag is set off by shock, that would by pass any so-called "smart air bag" system and render it irrelevant.

The third possibility exposes another of the many fallacies in the air bag theory. All the air bag propaganda videos show the passenger compartment intact. We know however, from numerous photographs and accident reports (see picture gallery, newspaper gallery, seatbelt victims and The Truth About Seatbelts and our latest video elsewhere on this web-site) that the crush in front end collisions extends into the passenger compartment at speeds as low as 30 mph, depending on the type of vehicle and the particular circumstances of the collision. The effect is to drive the steering wheel and, therefore, the air bag, towards the driver. Thus all these fine caculations which assume that the distance from the steering wheel to the driver is unchanged go out the window. Again from actual accident reports we know that few people are ever killed in these relatively low speed collisions unless they are killed by their seatbelts or by their air bags. Of course much depends on the sequence of events. Air bag deployment is a complex problem in physics and chemistry, a fact of which the airbag proponents were completely ignorant. The air bag may strike the driver or it may not, depending on numerous circumstances. But the difference, which in this case may be the difference between life and death, is measured in hundredths of a second.

There is  a fourth way in which air bags can kill, and that is without striking the driver or passenger at all. As we shall show in a subsequent paper, an air bag generates a powerful compression wave which propagates ahead of the bag when it deploys. This compression wave may kill or severely injure the driver or passenger even though the bag itself does not strike him.

A fifth way in which air bags can kill is without deploying at all, if some of the azide powder leaks out due to an imperfect seal. As we have shown in progress report 4, azide is so deadly that inhaling even a small amount can kill you. It can also be absorbed through the skin if you touch it or it gets on you.