The Centres for Risk Analysis and Injury Control of the Harvard School of Public Health sponsored a representative survey of 1,000 randomly-sampled Americans regarding their knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes about airbags and passenger safety. The key findings of the survey are summarised as follows: KNOWLEDGE: 67.1% of respondents recognise that it is dangerous to place an infant in a rear-facing restraint in the front seat of a vehicle with a passenger-side airbag; 71.0% of respondents recognise that a driver can be seriously injured or killed by an airbag if the driver is seated too close to the steering wheel; 68.4% of respondents recognise that more lives of female drivers have been saved by airbags than have been killed by airbags; MISPERCEPTIONS: 59.9% of respondents are under the (mistaken) impression that the lives of more children have been saved by airbags than have been killed by airbags; when asked when it becomes safe for a child to sit in the front seat, fewer than 25% of respondents with children in the home picked age 12 or greater, even though safety experts recommend that children under age 12 sit in the rear seat; 77.8% of respondents are under the (mistaken) impression that the risk of airbag-induced injury is minimal if a driver wears a seatbelt properly; 51.3% of respondents are not aware that a majority of the lives that have been saved by airbags have been among people who were not wearing seatbelts; 74.0% of respondents are not aware that the deployment threshold for airbags has been set by manufacturers at a level equivalent to hitting a cement wall at 12 mph (19.3 kph); ATTITUDES: 70.9% of respondents would favour a law in their state requiring children under the age of 10 to be seated in the rear seat and buckled; 66.3% of respondents favour the current law requiring all new vehicles to be equipped with dual-front airbags; although 54.0% of respondents state they have the same opinion toward airbags that they did three years ago, there is clear evidence that women are developing less favourable attitudes toward the technology; if given the opportunity to do so, 29.0% of respondents, when buying their next vehicle, would be likely to request that the dealer disconnect the airbag system; if their next vehicle were equipped with a manual cut-off switch, 33.0% of respondents can imagine circumstances where they would turn the airbag system off at the start of a trip. The survey results suggest that there is a widespread public support for airbags in the United States. However, this support is contingent to some extent on a variety of misperceptions about the technology. There is also substantial public support for policies to reduce the dangers of airbags, such as requiring children under the age of 10 to sit in the rear seat and wear safety belts. The public is also interested in improved airbag systems.
Samenvatting