Honda ready with new injury-reducing airbag

Starting next year, Honda will begin fitting vehicles with a new, advanced-design passenger-side front airbag that its engineers said is designed to mitigate brain and neck injuries by cradling the head like a baseball in a catcher's mitt. The design is particularly effective, Honda said, for angled impacts or when an occupant is not in optimal position when the crash occurs, reducing rotational acceleration of the head that can traumatize the brain.

More than half of all impacts occur at some angle, said Eric Heitkamp, Honda R&D Americas technical leader/principal engineer, crashworthiness, at a media reveal of the new airbag at the company's safety research facility in Raymond, Ohio. Heitkamp said the airbag was developed by the facility's engineers in partnership with restraints supplier Autoliv.