Last Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 | 2:02 PM ET
For short and tall passengers, safety air bags may pose a serious injury hazard, U.S. researchers say in a study calling for new safety standards to be introduced.
Craig Newgard, an emergency medicine and public health professor at Oregon Health and Science University, studied data from over 65,000 crashes that took place over 11 years and found that air bags were harmful to people smaller than four foot 11 and taller than six foot three.
Transport Canada says drivers and passengers should position themselves at least 25 centimetres away from the air bag cover.
(CBC)
"While air bags are modestly protective for mid-stature occupants, they appear to increase the risk of injury for large and small stature adults," Newgard said in the study published in the May issue of the Academic Emergency Medicine Journal.
Newgard said the many "smart" air bags use body weight to determine how the bags will deploy. He proposed that engineers should consider factoring in a height component. Until then, people not of medium height should not sit in the front passenger seat in a vehicle that has been equipped with an air bag, he said.
Drivers in Canada can have their vehicles equipped with an on-off switch for their air bags, however Transport Canada says the safety devices should only be disabled in specific cases, including for infants in rear-facing car seats and people with unusual medical conditions.
The federal agency also notes that deactivating air bags should be considered for drivers who because of medical reasons cannot position themselves at a distance so their sternum is at least 25 centimetres back from the air bag cover.
Children under the age 12, because they have a tendency to lean forward, along with drivers who cannot sit with their sternums at a 25-cm distance away from their air bag should also consider installing an on-off switch.
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May 16, 2007
 (CBS/AP)
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- (WebMD) In a crash, automobile air bags may raise the odds of serious injury for short or tall front-seat passengers, a new study shows.
The study comes from Craig Newgard, M.D., of Oregon Health & Science
University. He's due to present his findings Friday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.
Newgard analyzed injury statistics for 1995-2005 from a motor vehicle crash database.
The database shows that during the years studied, 52,552 drivers and 14,732 passengers were involved in crashes.
Most of those people weren't seriously injured, but 2.5% of the drivers and 2.6 percent of the passengers sustained serious injuries to any part of the body.
Newgard reviewed data on the drivers' and passengers' height and weight, air bags, and 10 factors about the crash.
He found that air bags were "modestly protective" for front-seat
passengers of medium height, which he defined as being between 5 foot 3 inches tall to 5 foot 11 inches tall.
However, Newgard writes that "air bags appear to increase the risk of
injury for large- and small-stature adults."
Newgard calculates that for drivers taller than 6 foot 3 inches, air bags were associated with a 5 percent greater risk of serious injury. He also estimates that for drivers shorter than 4 foot 11 inches, air bags were associated with a 4 percent increase in the risk of serious injury.
Weight didn't affect the results, Newgard notes.
Distance From Air Bag
Newgard's study doesn't provide information on how far the drivers and
passengers were seated from the air bags in the crashes.
Distance from the air bag is the most important factor in preventing air bag injuries, according to background information on the web site of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).
"There is no precise height and weight at which an individual is
considered to be at risk" from air bags, says the NHTSA. "The primary
determinant as to whether an individual will be injured by a deploying air bag is the distance from which the individual is seated from the air bag."
The NHTSA notes that there is no precise distance guaranteed to avoid air bag injury since all air bags are unique and deploy with different forces.
The NHTSA's advice:
-Wear your seatbelt.
-Sit as far from the air bag as possible to allow the air bag to
deploy.
-Short drivers should move the driver's seat back and tilt the seat back slightly to allow space between the driver's chest and the steering wheel.
-Drivers should refrain from leaning forward.
-To the extent possible, drivers should hold steering wheels from the side, so that their arms aren't in the way of the air bag.
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