|
|
|
|
| 
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom] |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Monday, 9 November 2009
Ford Motor Company is planning to offer a new kind of rear seat belts. These new rear seat belts do the work of seats belts as well as of airbags. Ford Motors said that it will start making use of these seat belts on the redesigned 2011 Explorer SUV.
These new seat belts contain an inflatable bag inside the shoulder strap and a small cylinder of cold compressed gas beneath the seat that is dispensed through the buckle when a crash is detected. The belts inflate less explosively than a traditional air bag and are designed to spread the force of a crash over an area of the body five times as large as regular seat belts do.
Ford is the first automaker to offer these inflatable rear seat belts, a technology aimed at reducing injuries to children and elderly passengers in a crash. Ford is trying to use this technology as a way to attract new customers, particularly at a time when many vehicles come with six or more air bags and myriad other safety features.
Ford feels that children and older people commonly sit in the back seat and are more susceptible to being injured in a crash, particularly in the head, chest or neck, than other occupants of a vehicle. Ford also offers radar-enabled adaptive cruise control and amenities called MyKey, which allows parents to impose certain limitations on teenage drivers, and Sync, a system that permits hands-free interaction with mobile phones and the car’s audio system.
Ford first demonstrated the concept of inflatable belts in 2001. Another automaker, Toyota, is planning to offer a similar feature next year in the Lexus LFA. Labels: Air-Bags, Airbags, Ford-Cars, Ford-Motor-Company, Rear-Safety-Belts, Safety-Belts, Safety-Features
Friday, 3 April 2009
Toyota pioneers the rear-seat center airbag to enhance safety and security of rear-seat car passengers. It sounds strange as how can an airbag be fitted in the rear seat but that’s where Toyota has showed its potential and technological creativity. This innovative airbag is fitted in a large, fixed center console in the back seat. When the car is hit from the sides, the airbag will deploy from the top of the centre console and act as a barrier restraining rear seat passengers from colliding with each other. This introduction by Toyota has embarked a new journey in the path of innovative discoveries positioning it again in the global automotive map. Toyota does not stop here when it comes to safety. The car manufacturer is still innovating technologies that will respond more effectively in case of accidents. Curtain shield airbags and knee airbags are also introduced by Toyota to enhance safety of the drivers as well as passengers. Labels: Airbags, Car-Manufacturer, Toyota-Cars
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
 Hyundai Motor Company, a leading car manufacturer in India, is planning to source a small and tiny car from India. This tiny car is expected to drive to United States. Hyundai promises to source a car that is sized between the Smart ForTwo and the Honda Fit and the speculations are in the air that the targeted car is Hyundai i10. The Hyundai i10 is performing well in the Indian car market with the excellent combination of better fuel economy, excellent features, high performance and good road stability. If we come to the size of i10, then it obviously falls between the size range of Smart Car and Honda Fit. The actual size of Hyundai i10 is about 140 inches that is about 21 inches shorter than the Fit and 34 inches longer than the Smart. So, the possibilities of driving out i10 from India to US are high. The car will obviously be loaded with added features including keyless entry, anti-lock brakes, fog lamps and dual airbag. The performance of i10 in US is questionable. Do you think that the car will deliver the same performance there as well? Labels: Airbags, Car-Production, Hyundai-i10
Monday, 2 June 2008
The car companies for a long time were not concerned of the driver or passenger safety. In India people want low priced cars and the car companies in order to attract customers have left aside the safety aspect. Even now cars like Ambassador and M800 do not come with any driver or passenger safety features. It has been proved, that car drivers who has fitted airbags and seat belts fastened to their body, suffer the least injuries on face, spine and chest. Now low cost car like Nano is likely to have airbags which is rare in the cars of such price range. Today the air bags are being offered as an option and are standard in premium small car segment. The scenario is slowly changing, as Indians are ready to pay more and want more from car companies. Labels: Airbags, car safety
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Many head-on and side impact collisions happen on a day-to-day basis. To minimize the distress, auto manufacturers introduced seat belts, which saved many occupants during serious collisions. But, there were also deaths caused in spite of using these seat belts. To further reduce the percentage of injuries and deaths, airbags came into the picture. Survey showed that with the airbags mounted, death and injuries can be reduced by 30-percent, which is admirable. An airbag is an empty bag, which becomes a soft cushion when serious crashes occur. Airbags made its debut in automobiles in the early 80’s, before which it was used only in airplanes. These airbags are installed between the occupants and the various car equipments and car structure to completely avoid or if possible decrease any sort of contact that the passengers may have with the hard surfaces of the car. Now manufacturers consider airbags as one of the safest equipments and bedeck their cars with two, six, and even eight. Various airbags are placed in different locations in the car. There is front driver and front passenger airbags, rear seat passenger airbags, front-side driver and passenger airbags, and side-curtain airbags. Foreign companies have started designing an airbag safety canopy system that covers all the passengers with the safety of airbags. An airbag slowly tries to bring the kinetic energy of the passengers to zero, when an accident occurs, to save the passengers from serious harm. An airbag has three important components - bag, sensor, and an inflation system. The bag looks like an empty pillow cover and is made out of fine nylon. The sensor is an electronic devise, which orders the bag to inflate. The sensors obtain the information from an accelerometer built into a microchip and then the inflation system starts to work. It combines sodium azide with potassium nitrate to produce nitrogen gas, which fills the airbag. All these actions happen in a few milliseconds, after or during a crash or in some cases as a pre-emptive action due to loss of control of the car. After the car come to a halt, the gas quickly dissipates from the bag through tiny pores, thus deflating it. The chalky substance that comes out of the bag while deflating is either ordinary talcum powder or cornstarch, used to smear the bag while in storage. Different makers mount airbags at different positions. In Volvo cars you can find airbags at the seat-back. This positioning of the airbags protects passengers regardless of how the seats are positioned. BMW cars have airbags mounted on the doors of its cars. The doors have more space and can hold bigger bags. BMW also features head bags, which works in a similar way as the other airbags. Researchers are still experimenting on these safety bags to design it even more efficiently to further decrease the injury rates. Labels: Airbags, BMW-Cars, Volvo
|
|
