Ford's inflatable seat belt
We reported on Ford’s inflatable seat
belt concept a few days ago and the Blue Oval finally released a pic of the belt. The concept is designed
specifically for second row passengers to further disperse the force of an impact over a wider contact area. Ford also
has a version for the lap belt, although we think the shoulder belt bag would look great with a Pistons logo across
it.Exactly how far can airbag technology go and where can we expect the inflatables to show up next? I remember an urban legend from back in the day about an early experiment with airbags. According to legend a car was fitted with a dozen airbags in various places throughout a vehicles interior. A test was conducted in which all the airbags were triggered at once and the resulting sudden increase in interior pressure caused all the windows to blow out and the vehicle to virtually explode from within. We'll let the MythBusters tackle the validity of that one, although we can't be far off from having airbags in our trunks to protect tomotoes from bruising on the way home from the grocery.
[Source: Ford]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JS 10:31AM (1/02/2006)
Excellent Idea!!! Just I would prefer those airbags to protect my precious bottles of beer in the trunk, lest I have nothing to drink while I wait for the police to show up at the scene!
j/k ;)
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Jay 1:49PM (1/02/2006)
It'll probably get to be like in the movie "Demolition Man" where the entire car fills up with foam.
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Car-la 5:06PM (1/02/2006)
I was thinking about the same thing. But then, this seems very useful, as it is otherwise very difficult to provide back-seat passengers with a head-on accident protection.
I just wonder, if the inflation of the airbag during an accident, when the seatbelt is tightened, leads to chest injuries. But I'm sure that's something that can be sorted out with microchips.
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JZ 8:53AM (1/18/2006)
Good idea - only problem is it wasn't developed by Ford. Check out the link below to an autos.msn.com article from last year by Tom Lankard. It shows the same picture without the original logo erased from the airbag. Apparently it's something called a "smartbelt" invented by a company owned by BF Goodrich. According to the article Ford showed the same system at the NAIAS in 2001. Everything old is new again.....
http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx?contentid=4019915
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