Safe-by-Wire: The Leading Edge in Vehicle Airbag Control

Consumer and safety requirements are increasing the number of airbags per vehicle that need to be controlled in an intelligent manner. Smart air bag controllers can determine which bags are fired and at what times and which sequences in order to increase occupant survivability and reduce the cost of airbag replacement for repairable vehicles.

Some vehicles already have an excess of 10 air bag systems and clearly a need for computer control to implement advanced features exists. The critical need to maintain the current high reliability factors in terms of misfiring and unintentional deployment must be maintained and perfected while adding more features.

The Safe-by-Wire consortium has been formed to address these concerns and they have designed a new bus protocol. This article will examine some of the issues regarding air bag systems and the Safe-by-Wire protocol specifically.