What Are The Basics Of An Air Bag?

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Cars consist of several objects, including the vehicle itself, loose objects in the car and of course, the passengers. If these objects are not restrained, they will continue moving at whatever speed the car is traveling at, even if the car is stopped by a collision.

When a car crashes, the force required to stop an object is very great because the car's momentum has changed instantly while the passengers' has not. The goal of any supplemental restraint system is to help stop the passenger while doing as little damage to him or her as possible.

What an air bag wants to do is slow the passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. The air bag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. Even that tiny amount of space and time is valuable, but if the system can slow the passenger evenly rather than forcing an abrupt halt to his or her motion.



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