Is Airbags Safe for Pregnant Women?

1. I know a lot of people, including me are wondering the safety of pregnant women when using safety belts in the vehicle. At the moment I have a pregnant wife with me and she always said that she was not comfortable with the safety belt. She said the safety belts will jeopardy her and the baby.

2. So what is the truth then? Here is the answer based on the study which was published in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. I hope this information will help you and certainly give some ideas what to tell to your spouse or to yourself (the readers might be the pregnant women too).

LOS ANGELES: Airbags appear safe for pregnant women and the babies they're carrying, a new study shows. Although it has been established that air bags save lives in car crashes, there has been a lingering question whether the devices might also protect pregnant women and unborn children.

In the new study, reported in China's Xinhua news agency, researchers at the University of Washington found that "pregnant occupants of motor vehicles with air bags were not at increased risk for pregnancy complications" such as Ceasarean delivery, foetal distress and low birth weight.

The researchers collected data on 2,207 pregnant women involved in car accidents, comparing the outcome of accidents in cars with and without air bags. They found no increased risk for injury to the mother or foetus related to whether the car had air bags or didn't, Xinhua said, citing the study.

They did find a 70% increase in pre-term labour and a threefold increase in foetal death among those in accidents in which air bags were deployed, compared with cars without air bags. However, the lead researcher Dr. Melissa A. Schiff, a professor of epidemiology, said the findings were not statistically significant.

"These findings were inconclusive because we really had too small a sample size," she said.

More study will be needed to see if there really is a connection between air bag deployment and pre-term labor or foetal death, she added.

"Air bags are safe for most outcomes, but the best protection for pregnant women comes from wearing a seat belt," Schiff said.

News Resource: Thestar Online

How Airbags Work?

1. For years, the trusty seat belt provided the sole form of passive restraint in our cars. There were debates about their safety, especially relating to children, but over time, much of the country adopted mandatory seat-belt laws. Statistics have shown that the use of seatbelts has saved thousands of lives that might have been lost in collisions.

2. How about an airbags? What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. The airbag 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, however, if the system can slow the passenger evenly rather than forcing an abrupt halt to his or her motion.

3. The goal of an airbag is to slow the passenger's forward motion as evenly as possible in a fraction of a second. There are three parts to an airbag that help to accomplish this feat:

4. The bag itself is made of a thin, nylon fabric, which is folded into the steering wheel or dashboard or, more recently, the seat or door.

5. The sensor is the device that tells the bag to inflate. Inflation happens when there is a collision force equal to running into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour (16 to 24 km per hour) or in other delta V. A mechanical switch is flipped when there is a mass shift that closes an electrical contact, telling the sensors that a crash has occurred. The sensors receive information from an accelerometer built into a microchip.

6. The airbag's inflation system reacts sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to produce nitrogen gas. Hot blasts of the nitrogen inflate the airbag.

7. So this is basic idea you need to know. I'll post more about airbag, the consequence of airbag during the crash.

Airbag is Useless without Seatbelt

1. I just realize that there is some “weird” culture among Malaysian which is lazy to wear seatbelt while driving. They are proud that they drive on high class safety vehicle. “Why should I wear seatbelt, my car got dual airbag system, also seat and side airbag too, those enough to protect me on any unexpected event, so no need for me to wear seatbelt”.

2. Let me to tell you this, some of you might aware of the label on the airbag pad. Majority of cars nowadays has SRS airbag system. What is SRS? Well, that is stands for Supplemental Restraint Systems. “So what dude? This doesn’t help to make me wear seatbelt?”.

3. The answer is on the S, not superman but “supplemental” word. What does it mean? It means supplemental which in other word means secondary or an addition. “Huh bro, even my baby knows that”. Yeah the different is your baby does not know what the primary or first safety device is. Let me tell you, it is seatbelt and airbag is just a secondary.

4. When designers design an airbag, they have an assumption that the driver or occupants of the vehicle wear the seatbelt. So, even if you car is the safest vehicle on earth, without wearing seatbelt, your life is not guaranteed to be spared. So please wear seatbelt even your car doesn’t have an airbag. In other words, airbag is useless without wearing seatbelt.

5. I always wonder, is it hard to wear the seatbelt? Majority of you will say it is easy, and piece of cake but at the same time only a portion of you wear the seatbelt in the moving vehicle. Maybe you guys just don’t deepen the reason of to wear the seatbelt. So, by giving this small piece of info on why you have to wear a seatbelt, hopefully your consciousness on road safety will at least arise a little bit. Slowly but surely, let’s make our next generation benefits from the safe culture we practice today.

Don't you agree? Feel free to add and comments..