How to Determine if a Side Air Bag Contributed to an Injury

While all new vehicles sold today must have frontal air bags that deploy from the steering wheel and dash to protect you in a frontal crash, many also have side air bags to shield you during side impact collisions.

This article explains how side air bags work, the different types of side air bags, and how to identify possible defects and the injuries they cause.

How Side Air Bags Work

Side air bags are sometimes called side impact air bags and are abbreviated as SAB or SIAB. They are designed to protect you when your car is struck on the side, such as during an intersection (T-bone) accident or if your car slides off the road and its side hits a tree or utility pole.

Crash sensors for side air bags are usually installed inside the bottom of the "B-pillar," which is the post behind the front door that helps hold up the roof. In some vehicles, these crash sensors are inside the front door or near the back seat area.

Your car, truck, van or SUV usually has at least one crash sensor on each side of the vehicle. During a side impact crash, one of your side air bag sensors should detect the sideways (lateral) deceleration and send an electrical signal to the air bags to begin inflating.

Side air bags are most commonly installed inside your seat, attached to the upper part of the seat frame nearest the door. In a few vehicles, the side air bags are installed inside your door, beneath the plastic trim cover. These side air bags are designed to provide a protective cushion between you and the side of your car.

Types of Side Air Bags

There are three primary types of side air bags. The first is known as a "torso" air bag since it protects only the torso or upper body. Rectangular and fairly small in size, it's often less than 18 inches tall when fully inflated.

This type was used in many of the first vehicles equipped with side air bags. Unfortunately, these air bags usually provide very little protection to your head and neck.

The second type of side air bag is known as a "head and torso" bag. Taller than a regular torso bag, it extends upward to protect the head and neck, as well as the chest and upper torso during side impact accidents.

Generally, this type of air bag protects you much better in an accident by protecting your head, neck and chest from the side of your car and the vehicle that hit you. This is particularly true when you are hit in the side of your vehicle by a taller vehicle, such as a pickup truck, van or SUV.
A more recent type of side air bag is the "curtain" air bag. A curtain air bag deploys downward from the edge of the roof and is intended to cover most of the window. That way it can protect your head and neck, even when they would otherwise move outside the window during the accident.

For maximum protection, curtain air bags are sometimes combined with torso air bags that deploy from the seat or door trim to protect your chest. In many cases, such curtain air bags extend from the front seat toward the back, and can thus also protect back seat passengers.

In prior years, other types of side air bags were sometimes used, but on a much smaller scale. For example, a few cars used a tubular protection system consisting of an air bag shaped like a tube that ran from the front to the back of the door, extending across the window. These systems need a separate torso air bag to adequately protect your chest. Often, there were significant disadvantages associated with such side air bags that resulted in limited use.

Many people do not realize there are a lot of side air bags that do not deploy during a rollover accident, even when the vehicle rolls onto its side. That is because those side air bags do not include an appropriate crash sensor that can detect rollover crashes.

We have received reports of salespeople at car dealerships telling consumers that their side impact air bags will deploy in rollover accidents, even when that is not true. Such statements can cause the salespeople and the dealer to be held responsible for misrepresentation or fraud when the air bags fail to deploy in a rollover.

Side Air Bag Defects and Injuries

Common defects in side air bag systems include failure to install a side air bag, or installing only a torso air bag that fails to protect the head and neck. Perhaps the most common defect reported to us is the failure of the side air bag to deploy during a side impact crash. Often, this results from defective sensor placement or defective software algorithms in electronic sensors that fail to detect the crash severity. This can stem from negligent testing programs that do not address real-world crashes.

Some side air bags can hang up on the seat or trim panels, causing them to deploy incompletely or improperly. Also, a few side air bag systems were defectively designed to be so forceful that they can inflict serious personal injuries or even catastrophic injuries when they inflate. Such "aggressive" side air bags are particularly dangerous for children and infants.

These defects can cause severe personal injuries, including head trauma; traumatic brain injuries (TBI); skull fractures; facial injuries; spinal cord injuries; cervical spine fractures or dislocations; paralysis (paraplegia, quadriplegia); arm and hand injuries, including traumatic amputation; chest injuries; heart injuries; pelvic injuries; bone fractures/orthopedic injuries; flail chest; as well as numerous other injuries. In some cases, defects in your side air bags can cause your death.