2011 Ford Explorer: Inflatable, seat-belt air bags to protect rear-seat passengers

Ford announced today that it will offer inflatable seat belts in the back seat of its 2011 Ford Explorer. The new safety feature will provide additional protection for kids and elderly passengers—common second-row occupants that are especially vulnerable to injury.
 
The belts will reel in and out like regular belts, but they will have air bags built into the webbing that will inflate upon impact. The inflatable belts will spread the load of the impact across about five times more body area, Ford says. Since rear seated passengers don’t have frontal impact air bags to help protect them in a crash, the seatbelts are their main source of crash protection during an impact. With regular safety belts, the force of the impact is spread only across the area of the body that is in contact with the belts. This can lead to neck and chest injuries in severe crashes, especially for young or small passengers who don’t fit in the belts as well as average-sized adults. (This is why children under eight years old should always ride in a child seat, to ensure the belts lay cross the strongest bony structures in their bodies.)
 
Ford claims the new belts will reduce those injuries and have been designed to still be used to safely install a child safety seat. The company says the technology protects even if passengers are sleeping with their heads resting on the belt.
 
The bag-equipped belts will start out as an option on the new 2011 Explorer, Ford says, then availability will expand to other models. Similar technology is available in some light aircraft.
 
The air bags sit inside the fabric of the seat belts and inflate in 40 milliseconds using a cool, low-pressure gas from a cylinder housed under the rear seats of the vehicle. This inflation rate is much slower than traditional air bags to reduce the potential for injury from the air bags themselves.

In surveys the company has conducted, it says 90 percent of respondents have deemed them as comfortable to wear as regular safety belts or more comfortable, because they are slightly wider and softer than standard belts. Ford hopes this will encourage more rear seat passengers to wear the belts. Currently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 60 percent of rear seat passengers wear their safety belts, compared with 83 percent of front-seat occupants.

Visit our guide to car safety. For more on child safety, see our kids and car safety guide.

—Eric Evarts