Although air bags are supposed to protect a vehicle's occupants in a crash, they often cause injuries that would not have occurred if the car did not have an air bag. The primary problems with air bags, as we have seen in litigation, follow:

1. Over-aggressive air bags. Some air bags deploy too fast and too far into the occupant space. Some bags deploy at speeds in excess of 200 mph, and since they are designed to restrain an average-sized male, such bags can have devastating effects on small women and children. This defect can cause severe head injuries, brain damage, blindness, and even decapitation.

2. Oversized or untethered air bags. Some air bags, because they are too big or they do not have tethers, come too close to occupants during the inflation process. Tethers are simple cloth straps sewn into the fabric on the inside of the bag to limit the rearward movement of the air bag during inflation. Despite the industry's knowledge of the dangers of untethered bags (most driver's side bags have been tethered for years), many passenger side bags do not have tethers.

3. Air bag deployment threshold too low. Many people have been injured by air bags in low speed accidents in which they would not have been hurt at all if the air bag had not hit them. Since air bags are not needed in low speed impacts to prevent injury, they should be designed to deploy only at higher speeds. A simple alternative is to set the deployment threshold (the speed at which an air bag will deploy) 18-25 mph, instead of at 8-15 mph as many systems are now designed. Another alternative is to make air bags deploy less aggressively in low-speed collisions and more aggressively in high-speed collisions -- the technology to do so has been available since the 1970s. Also, some companies make cars with so-called "smart air bags" which deploy at higher crash speeds if the occupant is belted and at lower crash speeds if the occupant is unbelted. This prevents belted passengers in low speed accidents from being injured by an air bag that isn't even needed in the accident.

4. Front-mounted horizontally deploying air bags. This design causes the air bag to deploy directly toward the passenger during inflation before it has formed its fully inflated shape - the "giant pillow" shown in the television commercials. In truth, in the early stages of deployment, an air bag is more like a missile than a pillow. A safer design used by some car manufacturers is to mount the air bag on the top part of the dashboard as close to the windshield as possible and to direct it upward toward the windshield at the beginning of the inflation process. Ford, GM, and Chrysler discussed such air bags (called top-mounted vertically deploying air bags) back in the early 1990s, yet continued to put rear-facing horizontally deploying bags into its cars. Particularly alarming is the presence of these defective bags in many minivans which are intentionally marketed to families with young children. Worse still, Chrysler minivan television ads show young children sitting in the right front passenger seat directly in the line of fire for these defective bags.

5. Inadequate warnings. The government only requires the sun visor warning label. The car companies could put more warning labels in cars (on the dashboard, for example) to explain to people that a deploying air bag can be very dangerous, especially to children and small statured women.

6. System malfunctions. There have been numerous reported instances (and recalls) of air bags because of unnecessary deployment (on ignition, upon striking a pothole or curb). These are typically caused by a problem in the electrical system or sensors.

7. Failure to deploy. Although air bags are not designed to deploy in every type of collision (such as rollovers and side impacts), they should deploy in accidents where the impact is frontal and the speed at impact is moderate (about 20-25 mph). The failure of the air bag to deploy can be caused by defective sensors or improper placement of the sensors.

8. Lack of an air bag. Air bags are not a new idea. Air bags were first patented in 1920 and the major car companies have been designing and testing them since the 1950s! Ford and GM were selling cars with air bags as early as 1972. Yet, many cars that came off the assembly line in 1997 still did not have air bags.

Thousands of automobiles with defective air bag systems are on the road in the United States today. When those cars are involved in routine collisions, people will be unnecessarily injured. We have been successful in litigating these cases against the automobile manufacturers and currently have several cases underway.