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Transportation

Acura Invents Airbag That Works Like a Catcher's Mitt (arstechnica.com) 37

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cars, trucks, and SUVs are safer today than they've ever been, but with 22,891 recorded U.S. passenger vehicle fatalities in 2018, it's obvious we still have some way to go. That's where today's invention comes in -- it's a new kind of airbag developed by Acura, designed to reduce brain injuries in front seat passengers. Instead of the single-chamber passenger airbag you probably have in the dash of your car, this one uses three individual chambers that work like a baseball catcher's mitt, allowing your head to decelerate more gently and without the kind of rotation that causes diffuse axonal injuries.

[W]hen the airbag deploys, outboard chambers inflate, linked by a fabric "sail." Behind that sail and in between the two outboard chambers is a third, central chamber -- this is the one your face eventually decelerates into, although by the time that happens, it has already been slowed somewhat. The three work together to prevent the passenger's head and neck from twisting, which could otherwise end up moving them toward the centerline or the door of the car. Acura wouldn't tell me quite how much it cost to develop the new airbag. But it did explain that it was the product of several years and hundreds of tests, including sled tests, static tests with and without test dummies, and full-scale crash tests of the new Acura TLX, which will be the first model to feature this new airbag when it goes on sale this fall.
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Acura Invents Airbag That Works Like a Catcher's Mitt

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  • Anyone else think it looks sort of like a clitoris?

  • Car failed to prevent accident. Human failed too, that's a given, but the car failed as well .. no excuse in 2020 for a car not to be able to tell it's going to get in an accident 99% of the time. Freaking implement cameras and active safety ASAP.

    • Yup, same opinion here.
      Yes, it's cool to slightly reduce injury in case of front collisions.
      But couldn't we pour more resources in avoiding front collisions in the first place?

      It's 2020 and car autonomously slamming the brakes to avoid crashing is a thing (a.k.a. FCAS - "Front Collision Avoidance System". i.e. a sort of Adaptivce Cruise Control on streoid).
      It has been a thing for a decade now.
      It's been a standard feature at several European manufacturer.

      Maybe better concentrating resources in improving that

      • I had a rental with CAS installed, damn thing went off in the middle of the motorway with NO ONE around me, damn near made me crash as I had never seen one before, big red âoe Kapowâ symbol flashed on the windscreen ( like from the old Batman tv series) and a Very loud alarm noise,..... first thing I did was pull over into service area and disable the damn thing. But then again, it was a Vauxhall, electrical gremlins love Vauxhalls

        • first thing I did was pull over into service area and disable the damn thing. But then again, it was a Vauxhall, electrical gremlins love Vauxhalls

          Proof that there is still room for improvement, and thus my point stand: pour more resources into perfecting that, until people are comfortable using it and letting it turned on, thus increases chances of collision being avoided.

          I had a rental with CAS installed, damn thing went off in the middle of the motorway with NO ONE around me, damn near made me crash as I had never seen one before, big red âoe Kapowâ symbol flashed on the windscreen ( like from the old Batman tv series) and a Very loud alarm noise,.....

          In case of this happening, you can override the emergency braking procedure by taking back the controls from ACC (i.e.: by putting your feet back on the accelerator pedal. If you keep that presser, you overide any FCAS braking or ACC slowing).

          An occasional source of (not quite false

    • Car failed to prevent accident. Human failed too, that's a given, but the car failed as well .. no excuse in 2020 for a car not to be able to tell it's going to get in an accident 99% of the time. Freaking implement cameras and active safety ASAP.

      What if you're stationary at a light and some drunk in an old 70's car rams into you at high speed?

      • It's possible to retrofit that kind of technology into any vehicle. It's only easy on those with electric power steering and four-channel pumped ABS, though. If they don't already have the right hardware in them then a retrofit is a custom job for approximately every vehicle family. Legislatively you could start pushing the date back year by year, after a substantial grace period to let automakers get ready to distribute the hardware. Classics could be exempted but might require a more advanced license, lik

        • That's not the point. The point is you can be doing nothing at all and still have a fatal crash, no car tech can prevent it from happening to you.

    • I shunted into the back of a car at a roundabout last year. Thought the other driver was going and I was looking at the oncoming traffic to judge if I could go, at the point where I put my foot on the gas to begin moving.

      Despite my car having a front sensor with automatic braking, it turns out that using the gas pedal overrides this automatic system. I'm assuming that it's designed this way because the driver is assumed to have a better view of the bigger picture than a sensor mounted to the front of the ca

      • Your comment falls a bit flat when you make it out as if sensors in Tesla's are better than average. They really aren't. On top of that Tesla's attempt to sell their level two self-drive as an autopilot makes most Tesla drivers more dangerous as they tend to believe it can do more than it can.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      yea here's the problem, all that shit isn't free and a basic sedan loaded with shit that barely functions out of the dealership will break in 4 years and cost more per month than my fucking mortgage

      its great we have all this junk in modern cars, but they have yet found a way to make it cheap, reliable and user friendly (like seriously go rent a car and try to figure out the radio while driving, its a fuckin radio)

  • They should make it look like a facepalm when deployed.

  • Still true? (Score:3)

    by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Saturday June 20, 2020 @04:22AM (#60205150)

    Do the US airbags still deploy with much more force than the airbags in Europe because the US rules assume that the drivers don't wear their seatbelts?

    https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Still true? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by imidan ( 559239 ) on Saturday June 20, 2020 @05:32AM (#60205222)
      When the US started mandating seatbelts, it was a huge controversy. There are still plenty of people who claim that not wearing a seatbelt is better because in the event of a collision, you'll be "thrown free" of the wreckage. Imagine if the US government just started mandating seatbelts now. It would be an enormous partisan battle, conspiracy theorists would be working overtime, and conservatives would refuse to wear seatbelts to "own the libs." Americans have been strongly resistant to data and facts for decades, but we seem recently to have gone into overdrive, so to speak.

      • "Seat belts lead to Communism" says Father, while slowly stirring, stirring, stirring his coffee.

    • No. The USA has had dual stage airbags since at least the late 90's. Has a 1998 Ford Ranger that had dual stage front airbags. Starting in the 2006 model year, all passenger cars and light-duty trucks must be equipped with sensors that identify children and very small adults and deploy the airbag with less force or not at all. https://www.edmunds.com/car-sa... [edmunds.com]

  • Cars, trucks, and SUVs are safer today than they've ever been

    Disclaimer: Safer for vehicle occupants only, the roads are not getting safer for motorcyclists, cyclists or pedestrians due to people driving less safely because of all the their new safety systems.

    • Radar adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot obstacle detection all benefit motorcyclists.

      Motorcycles are also not part of the set "cars, trucks, and SUVs".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Do they? Because I've heard of these systems not noticing cyclists because they are designed to notice motor vehicles primarily.

        I'd like to be wrong, I'll be happy when there are systems in cars that will stop the drivier from pulling out at a junction when a motorbike or cyclist is coming down the road.

        And what if a driver tries to over-take a bicycle too closely? This happens all to often.

        And how many drivers would turn off such a system given the chance because 'cyclists get in the way'.

        Last I saw vehicl

        • The best way to solve that problem for cyclists is still separated cycle routes and lanes anywhere they're possible, which with a little foresight is pretty much everywhere. And it produces a more liveable space overall. Mixing cars and bicycles is madness.

          As for motorcycles, I've been tempted by them occasionally but am fairly well convinced that they are similarly insane. But their best hope is still self-driving or at least computer-assisted driving, with a mixture of sensors that enable accurate recogni

  • They had to make their own (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Since nobody can trust Takata airbags any more.

  • If it fails to stop you, it throws itself to the ground and stomps around angrily.

  • Is it?
    Look, I'm all for improvements to car safety but there's certainly a 90/10 principle here. US auto fatalities have dropped from a rate of 29 per 100k population to right around 11. 2010-11-12-13-14 they were below 11, the lowest they've been since 1918 (at/before which it was more about adoption rates to that crazy new horseless carriage). In actual terms, we've dropped from >50k deaths per year (when the US population was only 2/3 of today) to 22k

    Clearly, auto manufacturers are large companies

  • They keep talking about how this airbag will prevent your neck from twisting as much, but their own promo video contradicts the claim. You can clearly see the dummy with the new airbag on the right getting twisted a lot more than the dummy with the old airbag on the left:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Not super reassuring. I wouldn't want that to be my neck in a crash.

  • I'm waiting for safety foam that 'turns you into a cannoli"

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