A study of the safety performance of production vehicles equipped with driver air bags in the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) test programs.

This paper presents an analysis of the safety performance for vehicles equipped with restraint conditions from the crash test results obtained in the FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard) No. 208 compliance test programme and from the New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP). The restraint conditions include: (1) the belt systems (three points and two-points systems); (2) the air bag system; and (3) combined belt/air systems. Additionally, a summary is presented of the results obtained from a test programme of static deployments of selected production driver air bag systems.