Most car manufacturers, even in India, would like you to believe that the more airbags you have in your car, the safer you are. However, it turns out that it may not be entirely true. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization in the United States of America. The IIHS is dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries and property damage from motor vehicle crashes.
The IIHS has released a statement claiming that their researchers have found that the knee airbag offers little benefit. An increasingly common type of airbag offered in new cars by manufacturers is the driver knee airbag. However, the study by the IIHS researchers reveals that the knee airbag — has a negligible effect on injury risk and, in fact, may even increase it in some cases.
The knee airbag is placed below the steering wheel from the lower part of the dashboard. They are said to be used to distribute impact forces to reduce leg injuries and may also help reduce forces on an occupant’s chest and abdomen by controlling lower body movement.
IIHS researchers examined both crash test data and information from real-world crash reports. The team looked at injury measurements from more than 400 frontal crash tests. Additionally, they compiled crash reports from 14 states and compared injury risk in vehicles with knee airbags with risk in vehicles without knee airbags.
Their results showed that knee airbags had only a small effect on injury measures recorded by dummies. After analyzing real-world crashes, knee airbags reduced overall injury risk by half a percentage point, from 7.9% to 7.4%, but this result wasn’t statistically significant.
Becky Mueller, an IIHS senior research engineer said that “There are many different design strategies for protecting against the kind of leg and foot injuries that knee airbags are meant to address. Other options may be just as, if not more, effective.”
One of the main reasons why manufacturers provide knee airbags in the US, is to meet the requirements of the mandated tests with unbelted dummies. IIHS states that it is possible that knee airbags would help unbelted occupants in real-world crashes. While in India, regulations only require all new cars to be equipped with a driver airbag, however, most manufacturers do offer more safety equipment. However, the knee airbag is offered only on selected models in India like the Toyota Innova Crysta and Yaris in addition to other vehicles in the premium and luxury segment.
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