Most seat belts are designed to stretch during a crash to reduce the force of impact on the wearer while still preventing contact with the interior of the vehicle. Ford has gone one step further with plans to introduce inflatable seat belts designed to reduce the pressure on the chest and help control head and neck motion in rear seat passengers, spreading the crash force across five times more of the occupant’s torso than conventional seat belts.

Unlike conventional airbags found in other parts of the car that inflate through a rapid chemical reaction triggered by an igniter, the seatbelts’ tubular air bag inflates with cold compressed gas, which flows through a specially designed buckle from a cylinder housed below the seat. The inflatable belt’s accordion-folded bag breaks through the belt fabric as it fills with air, expanding sideways across the occupant’s body in about the same amount of time it takes a car traveling at highway speed to cover a yard of distance.

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Tags: inflatable belt, inflatable seat belt, rear seat passengers

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Automotive, Innovation, gizmag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.