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New, safer materials key to ending airbag crisis

New, super safe materials constitute the surest solutions resolving the auto airbag crisis afflicting 33 million cars in America and 75 million worldwide.

New, super safe materials enhance driver and passenger safety more effectively than swapping out airbags. By covering airbag inflators with fabric sheaths, automobile drivers and passengers achieve additional, extra protection when propellants or pyrotechnics activate airbags.  Threads are designed, fabrics are constructed and textiles woven so that applied stress makes super safe materials phenomenally stronger, thicker and heftier. Instead of fraying or rending, materials capture and contain potentially lethal shrapnel and metal released during catastrophic airbag ruptures and detonations. This technological advance can be used with current or new devices and supplements any design and manufacturing changes of an airbag inflator.

A technology solution brings other, positive benefits. Regulatory costs, the fees, fines, and penalties that firms bear to comply with regulations, would fall precipitously. Many existing and proposed fees now necessary to detect defects and police solutions would become less necessary due to the designed-in safety of super safe materials integrating applied fabric technology and textile science into automobiles. Beneficently intended and perhaps probative, compensation funds have their own costs and frustrations. Just now faulty General Motors ignition switches account for 124 deaths and 275 injuries yet Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney overseeing compensation  for defect victims, determined that he could approve  only 1 in 10 claimants, rejecting 91 percent of applicants and settling on awards for just under 400 of 4,300 persons. And, petitioners have no recourse following his decision making according to news reports. By contrast, designed-in safety like super safe sheaths enhance consumer welfare by  protecting automobile occupants at the onset.

Super safe sheaths are particularly timely, because recalls of 400,000 recent model Volkswagens, specifically 2010 to 2014 CC, Passat, and Tiguan, 2010 to 2013 Eos and Jetta,  2011 to 2014 Golf and GTI, and 2011 to 2013 Jetta Sportwagen, undo  conventional wisdom that airbag ruptures affect older cars in humid areas

Following rupture of the side airbag in a recent model VW near St. Louis, Missouri this July, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called on Takata to voluntarily recall all vehicles equipped with its airbags.

While the Takata Corporation has manufactured vast numbers of recalled airbags with ammonium nitrate, other airbag suppliers have defects, too. Earlier this year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recalled 2,120,000 Acura MDX, Dodge Viper, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty, Honda Odyssey, Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Matrix and Toyota Avalon cars  in connection with unwarranted activations of TRW airbags. In 2012, NHTSA investigated Autoliv airbags for failing to inflate.

Even if airbag suppliers, auto manufacturers and NHTSA get data management right going forward, data collection and analysis is inherently retrospective. Detecting, evaluating and eventually correcting a problem can only take place after needless injuries and accidents have occurred. To be sure, the lag time between early June and early August in the VW airbag explosion portends well, but it is anyone’s guess whether comparable urgency will drive action several years out after the crisis fades.  Chronic, stunningly inadequate data provision and analysis led to the Takata crisis.

Auto manufacturing process and design failures remain inherently part of the problem.

The Takata airbag crisis is a symptom of systemic failures of industry and regulatory decision making over last 15 years.  While Takata may be the most visible participant, it’s hardly alone.

A systemic failure warrants a neutral, innovative, technology solution delivering a systemic solution.

Designed-in safety with new, super safe materials realizes the systemic solution. Swapping one inflator for another leaves motor vehicle occupants exposed. Even if industry and regulators use data meaningfully, fresh competencies remain necessarily after an injury, death or accident occurs. Auto manufacturers are so focused on cost optimization, many miss the forest for the trees evaluating new, super safe materials. Super safe materials provide lower regulatory costs and designed-in safety for suppliers, auto manufacturers, and automobile drivers and passengers.  They reduce auto supplier and maker liability and lower insurer collision and accident claims, too.

Donahue and Pastore are principals of Energetic Textiles, a technology originator, partnering with new materials engineering and manufacturing innovators.

Tags Edward Markey Richard Blumenthal

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