Citation

Prasad AK, Louden AE, Pack R. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2005; 2005: 20p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In May of 2000, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Final Rule upgrading Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, 65 FR 30680. This advanced air bag rule specified significant changes in the frontal occupant protection requirements for light passenger vehicles (GVWR≤8500 lb), to be phased in over several years. These included adding requirements for protecting small adult female occupants, adding requirements to minimize the risk of deploying air bags to out-of-position (OOP) children and small adult occupants, increasing the test speed for the belted 50th percentile male dummy, adding a rigid barrier test condition for the unbelted 50th percentile male test dummy and eliminating the unbelted sled test option. In 2001, the agency initiated research to monitor the overall performance of advanced air bags. This paper updates the status of the research and presents results of the testing performed since the 18th ESV Conference. Results from static deployment tests for OOP occupants and dynamic crash tests are presented.