GM patents airbags on outside of cars
They are designed to protect pedestrians in a crash
DETROIT – Airbags protect passengers inside cars. General Motors engineers think they can work just as well on the outside to save pedestrians.
GM received a patent last month for an external airbag designed to “provide protection to a pedestrian” in a crash, the latest iteration in an industry effort to address a growing problem that accounts for roughly one in seven U.S. traffic deaths.
“The pedestrian protection airbag could become an important engineering solution in the future,” said Tom Wilkerson, safety communications spokesman for GM.
Other automakers are working on their own passenger-protection ideas. Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, has a patent for a way to install airbags in the framework at the sides of the windshield as a way to cushion the potential blow to pedestrians. Volkswagen also has explored airbag alternatives.
Volvo deployed a pedestrian airbag on its V40 model. The technology takes a different approach than GM, seeking to cushion the windshield area.
It is not the initial impact from a vehicle that is most likely to kill pedestrians but secondary impact when pedestrians pass over the hood and hit their heads on the front roof pillars, said Maeva Ribas, manager of design analysis at The Carlab, an automotive product planning consultant.
The number of pedestrians killed in traffic jumped 11% to nearly 6,000 in
2016, according to a report released in March by the Governors Highway Safety Association. It was the biggest singleyear increase in pedestrian fatalities.
GM filed extensive paperwork with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that included dozens of pages of description, optional applications and 90 technical sketches. The focus is an airbag mounted in a “fender region” adjacent to the vehicle’s hood and before the side door “to provide protection to a pedestrian from impacting the frontal area of a vehicle structure.”
The company declined to discuss specifics of how the technology might change injury risks, saying a competitive research and development landscape requires discretion.
GM did not include how potential collisions would be detected to trigger airbag deployment.
The airbag patent was among at least
80 patents awarded to GM in December, many of which had been pending for years.