Our practice > Air Bag Law

There is no single “airbag law” that covers all laws, rules and regulations that apply to airbags. However, some people refer to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208 (FMVSS 208) as the “airbag law” since it contains the primary regulations for occupant crash protection passed by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Although FMVSS 208 is about 80 pages long, its core is represented by injury criteria measured by a crash test dummy during testing.

However, a car can still be defective even if it complies with FMVSS 208, as it represents only a minimum standard; carmakers are free to exceed the requirements of FMVSS 208, and they should clearly do so.  State laws relating to negligence, strict liability (defective products), breach of warranty, and others impose a duty on the car companies to use reasonable care in designing their cars and avoiding defects in them.  As a car defect attorney, I see many cases where the manufacturer claims to have complied with all applicable safety standards and yet there are airbag defects, seat belt defects, steering and handling defects, fuel system defects, and other defects.  Furthermore, millions of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs have been recalled to fix safety defects, even though each of those vehicles was originally claimed to have met its safety standards.  Click here for a summary of selected airbag recalls.  Click here for a summary of selected seat belt recalls.

The injury criteria used in the federal standards have evolved in the past decade as frontal airbag systems have evolved, but are summarized below for the 50th percentile male test dummy. There are also injury criteria for other size crash test dummies, including those representing a 5th percentile (small-stature) female, 6 year old child, 3 year old child, and 12 month old child (using the CRABI Child Restraint Air Bag Interaction test dummy). Additional information can be found in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 571.208, as well as part 572.

INJURY CRITERIA FOR 50th PERCENTILE MALE HYBRID III TEST DUMMY

Pre-depowered airbags (generally prior to 1998 model year):

  1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
  2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 1000 (36 ms maximum)
  3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
  4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 3 inches
  5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds

Depowered airbags (generally beginning with the 1998 model year):

  1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
  2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 1000 (36 ms maximum)
  3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
  4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 3 inches
  5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds
  6. Neck flexion (forward bending) moment: 190 Nm
  7. Neck extension (rearward bending) moment: 57 Nm

  Advanced airbags (phased in beginning generally with the 2004 model year):

  1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
  2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 700 (15 ms maximum)
  3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
  4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 63 mm (2.5 inches)
  5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds
  6. Neck tension limit: 4170 N (937 pounds)
  7. Neck compression: 4000 N (899 pounds)
  8. Combined neck injury (Nij) limit: 1.0 (for any combination of tension-extension, tension-flexion, compression-extension or compression-flexion)