Skip to main content

Airbag technologies help mitigate occupant ejection

TRW Automotive Holdings has developed a range of curtain airbag technologies that the company claims help mitigate the risk of occupant ejection. According to Norbert Kagerer, vice president of TRW's Occupant Safety Systems business, the recent US legislation regarding occupant ejection mitigation underscores the importance of a number of airbag technologies designed to help keep occupants inside the vehicle. For example, TRW has developed one piece woven (OPW) curtain designs that include the unique X-T
April 23, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
601 TRW Automotive Holdings has developed a range of curtain airbag technologies that the company claims help mitigate the risk of occupant ejection.

According to Norbert Kagerer, vice president of TRW's Occupant Safety Systems business, the recent US legislation regarding occupant ejection mitigation underscores the importance of a number of airbag technologies designed to help keep occupants inside the vehicle. For example, TRW has developed one piece woven (OPW) curtain designs that include the unique X-Tether technology. Says Kagerer, “due to this advanced design approach the stiffness of the inflated bag cushion can be increased to mitigate the risk of occupant ejection. Based on TRW's X-Tether OPW cushion technology, the inflated chambers of side curtain airbags will be designed in a seamless way, allowing the curtain airbags to be easily tailored to specific vehicle geometries.

Other key enablers include technologies such as cold gas and hybrid inflators that when combined with advanced bag coatings can assist in keeping the curtain airbags inflated for several seconds.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • A carbon free and accident free Europe by 2015?
    February 2, 2012
    By 2050, the Europe Commission aims to make transport in Europe carbon- and accident-free. Between now and then, however, a significant technological development and deployment effort is needed. Here, Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, talks about what's being done. In many respects, COOPERS, CVIS and SAFESPOT, set up by the European Commission (EC) to explore the potential of cooperative infrastructure systems, are already legacy projects. Between them, the three devel
  • Geotoll’s payment app could be the smart answer to tolling interoperability
    July 30, 2013
    Jon Masters looks at a smartphone app which could be the ‘disruptive technology’ that eases the way to interoperability in tolling systems. Consumer demand may soon drive the biggest step change yet in tolling. In the United States a new start-up company, Geotoll, has launched a smartphone app for electronic toll payment. It is not beyond possibility that rapid growth of the market for smartphones will continue – an estimated 50% of US citizens and 80% of Europeans now have one – and that the Geotoll brand
  • Can GNSS solve the tolling world’s woes?
    December 5, 2013
    Kapsch’s Arno Klamminger and Wolfgang Fleischer consider the need for an agnostic approach to technology for charging and tolling. Periodically, given the march of technology, it is worth pausing and taking stock of where we have got to and where we go next. Such reflections are necessary if we are to take full advantage of what we have at our disposal and, potentially, avoid decisions which push us down technological culs de sac. A look at the use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based technol
  • Frequency changes threaten vehicle safety applications
    January 24, 2012
    The use of frequency spectrum at 5.9GHz for vehicle safety applications is at risk because of two draft bills currently before Congress. Here, we look at why and what’s being done to address the issue. In the US, the right of cooperative infrastructure to use frequency at 5.9GHz is under threat as a result of the proposal of two bills in Congress. The chronology of spectrum allocation for Dedicated Short- Range Communications (DSRC)-based Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety a