Hyundai doubles-up on airbags

A car that can save your life twice is on its way.

It’s a wham-BAM airbag solution to a problem that’s been identified all the way up to F1 racing.

Many crashes are multi-impact events and that has stumped researchers trying to find the right time, the right way, and the right impact, to trigger a vehicle's airbags.

Since an airbag can only fire once, research has focussed on a 'Three Bears' solution - not too early, not too late, but just right - to the challenge of pinball-style crashes.

Surprisingly, it’s not one of the world’s recognised safety pioneers - Volvo or Mercedes-Benz (which researched airbags for grand prix cars but was stumped by multi-collision hits), which is promising the answer.

Instead, Hyundai says it has developed a multi-collision airbag system after extensive research and testing that's based on American crashes.

There is no timetable yet for the system, but Hyundai Australia is promising an early local introduction.

"If it becomes the standard for airbags, then certainly it will be included on our vehicles," the managing director of Hyundai Australia, Scott Grant, tells carsales.com.au.

"It’s a safety feature that the company is working on globally, so when it’s appropriate it will be available in Australia."

But he’s not promising an across-the-board roll-out, as the new system is yet to get a timetable and price.

"We will consider it. There are obviously factors we have to balance. That includes the cost.

"Safety features will continue to develop and will be deployed over more models over time. That’s been our strategy. It’s updated and added to vehicles when they have a full model change," he added.

Why is it important?

The multi-collision system has evolved out of research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the key safety organisation in the USA, which has data from 56,000 crashes between 2000 and 2012.

It says around one-third of these events involve a primary impact that is followed by collisions with secondary objects such as trees, electrical posts or other vehicles.

The highest percentage of multi-collision crashes involve cars crossing the centre line (30.8 per cent), followed by collisions caused by a sudden stop at highway tollgates (13.5 per cent), highway media-strip collisions (8 per cent), then sideswiping and colliding with trees and electric poles (4 per cent).

Hyundai says current airbag systems do not offer secondary protection when the initial impact is insufficient to cause them to deploy. However, the multi-collision airbag system allows airbags to deploy effectively during a secondary impact by calibrating the status of the vehicle and the occupants.

Its technology detects the position of occupants in the cabin following an initial collision since, when they are forced into unusual positions, the effectiveness of existing safety technology can be compromised.

The multi-collision system is designed so airbags deploy even faster when initial safety systems may not be effective, providing additional safety when drivers and passengers are most vulnerable.

Hyundai says that by recalibrating the collision intensity required for deployment, the airbag system responds more promptly during a secondary impact and improves the protection for vehicle occupants in a multi-impact crash.

"By improving airbag performance in multi-collision scenarios, we expect to significantly improve the safety of our drivers and passengers," says Taesoo Chi, the head of Hyundai Motor Group’s chassis technology centre.

But Hyundai, which says its system will be fitted to all of the group’s vehicles - Hyundai, Kia and Genesis - is not stopping there.

"We will continue our research on more diverse crash situations as part of our commitment to producing even safer vehicles that protect occupants and prevent injuries," says Chi.