Airbags are considered to be passive vehicle safety apparatuses that engage during impact. By cushioning your head and buffering it from hitting the dashboard or steering wheel, air bags greatly reduce the amount of head injuries in an accident. Vehicle manufactures are beginning to offer these air filled sacks on the sides of the car as well. This helps immensely in protecting the head from side impact with the car window in the event of an accident.

The history of airbags dates back to the mid 20th Century with a man named John Wenrick, who can be credited with creating some of the technology surrounding airbags. He came up with a cushion that he thought could drastically reduce fatalities in car accidents. Ford Motors took his ideas to the next level by creating air filled restraints. Almost 10 years later, Mercedes Benz became the first manufacturer to produce these airbags for their vehicles.

By the 1960's, car accidents were becoming more and more common. New laws requiring the production of airbags in vehicles were being proposed. In the meantime, an engineer by the name of Allen Breed developed a sensor the would quickly initiate the airbag deployment during an accident. This technology has been perfected over the years to work more effectively.

It was over 20 years later than a new law put forth by the US government mandated that all vehicles created thereafter would be required to come equipped with airbags. In the mid 1990's, the law was modified to include light trucks in this safety requirement as well.

Statistics show that there are currently about 230 vehicles on the road today and only about 75% of those come equipped with an safety airbag system. Of this number, less than ten percent are supplied with side airbags as well. It has been gauged by the National Highway Traffic Safety agency that airbag technology can be credited with saving the lives of nearly 20 thousand people in serious car accidents. When used with a seat belt, air bag effectiveness increases by 25%. For those who drive without wearing a seatbelt, the presence of an airbag decreased fatality rates by 32%.

The first generation of airbags released on the market were designed to deploy with a huge amount of force which could actually cause injury. The second generation of airbags were designed to use much less force and therefore reduced fatality rates by an additional 6% in each category. However, this data is only relevant to adult passengers. Children riding in a vehicle equipped with passenger airbags actually had an increased death rate of nearly 35%.

In the category of head-on collisions, using a set belt by itself can decrease serious head injuries by 60%. When a seat belt is used in conjunction with an airbag, it can decrease injuries by almost 85%. While there have been about 200-300 documented fatalities related to airbags, almost all of them resulted from the original airbags which were deployed with greater force.

Children until 10 years old are at the greatest risk for injury due to airbags because of their size, and therefore they are much safer when seated in the back of a car. Even adults have sustained injuries and deaths from airbags as well, especially when seated too close to the dashboard. The force of the airbags when released on impact is great enough to cause injury, so it's best to have your seat positioned further back from the dashboard and steering wheel and have your children sit in the rear of the car.