Front-Center Air Bags Make Debut in General Motors Crossovers
The air bag is also designed to serve as a buffer between the driver and front passenger in driver- and passenger-side impacts, and would deploy in rollovers, G.M. said.
“In a side impact it’s very easy for the occupant to slip out of the shoulder belt and then start leaning or tipping across the vehicle head-first,” Scott Thomas, a senior safety engineer for G.M., said in an interview. In such cases, the head or torso can strike any object intruding into the vehicle, the center console, the opposite seat or the other occupant.
The front-center air bag was developed over three years by G.M. and Takata, an automotive supplier, Mr. Thomas said.
Automakers and safety advocates have primarily focused on increasing occupant safety in near-side crashes, in which the impact occurs on the occupant’s side of the vehicle. These impacts are responsible for more deaths and serious injuries than far-side crashes, according to Adrian Lund, the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety , a nonprofit group financed by the insurance industry.
DOT drivers save man from burning car
Quick thinking by two Minnesota Department of Transportation snowplow drivers saved his life.
If Curtis Brighten and Tom Johnson had not extinguished an engine fire of Lee’s pickup that had crashed into Brighten’s snowplow, Lee might have died from burns or been disfigured for life.
“We’re just glad the fire extinguishers worked because we’re confident that in another two or three minutes he would been screaming for his life,” Johnson said.
Instead, Lee was treated and released with scrapes and bruises from the local hospital that night.
Lee works at Quality Pork Processors in Austin. Driving his 2003 Chevy S10, he was on his way home to Fountain Street in Albert Lea. As he regularly does, he called his mother around 4 p.m. to let her know he was done with work.
When he didn’t arrive by 6 p.m., Corina Bergeson began to worry. She called his phone, and a nurse at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea answered.
The crash happened on Interstate 90 a mile west of the Hayward exit, as Lee was headed west in the right lane while a snowplow driven by Brighten was in the left lane clearing the mix of slush and ice covering the freeway. Lee said his pickup lost traction and fishtailed as the freeway curved slightly rightward. By the time he straightened the pickup, he was in the left lane and without time to brake before the front of his truck hit the right, rear of the plow.
black interior colour scheme, electric power assisted rack & pinion steering with tilt adjustment, engine immobilizer, and driver side airbag.
from nearby Engine 5, and taken to a local hospital by ambulance. Firefighters said the man was wearing a seat belt and that the car's airbag deployed.and more »
