Honda's New Airbag Catches Your Head to Save Your Brain

Since their explosive debut in the 1970s, airbags have saved tens of thousands of lives—at least 50,000 in the United States alone—and their impact has only expanded with time. This week, Honda announced that it has developed a new front passenger airbag that will protect occupants from a wider range of impacts, specifically preventing a type of injury where the victim’s head rolls off the bag during an angled crash. Engineers at Honda R&D Americas, based near Columbus, Ohio, worked with airbag manufacturer Autoliv to create a bag that inflates into something approximating a baseball catcher’s mitt, with three inflated compartments. A central “sail panel” sits above the recessed center compartment and stretches between two taller outer compartments, to help catch and decelerate the passenger’s head. Using a new generation of sensor-equipped crash dummies, the engineers honed the design to create a faster—yet softer—catching of the human noggin.