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Ford Explorer

More and better advanced safety technology is coming to your car with Ford’s new inflatable seat belts. Billed as “the world’s first automotive inflatable seat belts,” this new technology combines air bag technology with traditional seats belts to provide an “added level of crash safety protection for rear seat occupants,” says Ford.

Ford claims its inflatable seat belt system is “designed to help reduce head, neck and chest injuries for rear seat passengers, often children and older passengers who can be more vulnerable to such injuries.”

While these advanced seat belts will eventually be offered globally on all Ford vehicles, the system will be introduced on North American-built 2011 Ford Explorers.

“Ford’s rear inflatable seat belt technology will enhance safety for rear-seat passengers of all ages, especially for young children who are more vulnerable in crashes,” says Sue Cischke, Ford’s group vice president of sustainability, environmental and safety engineering. “This is another unique family technology that builds on our safety leadership, including the most top safety ratings of any automaker."

How do inflatable seat belts work?

Ford engineers built these new seats belts to deploy over a rear passenger’s torso and shoulder in about 40 milliseconds after a car crash. In the event of a frontal or side crash, the inflatable belt’s increased diameter more effectively holds the occupant in the appropriate seating position, helping to reduce the risk of injury.

Here, Ford engineers describe in detail how the system works:

• Vehicle safety sensors determine the severity of the collision in the blink of an eye and deploy the inflatable belts’ air bags. Each belt’s tubular air bag inflates with cold compressed gas, which flows through a specially designed buckle from a cylinder housed below the seat.
• The inflatable belt’s accordion-folded bag breaks through the belt fabric as it fills with air, expanding sideways across the occupant’s body in about the same amount of time it takes a car traveling at highway speed to cover a yard of distance.
• The use of cold compressed gas instead of a heat-generating chemical reaction – which is typical of traditional air bag systems – means the inflated belts feel no warmer on the wearer’s body than the ambient temperature. The inflatable belts also fill at a lower pressure and a slower rate than traditional air bags, because the device does not need to close a gap between the belt and the occupant.
• The inflated belt helps distribute crash force energy across five times more of the occupant’s torso than a traditional belt, which expands its range of protection and reduces risk of injury by diffusing crash pressure over a larger area, while providing additional support to the head and neck. After deployment, the belt remains inflated for several seconds before dispersing its air through the pores of the air bag.

In Ford’s research, more than 90 percent of those who tested the inflatable seat belts found them to be similar to or more comfortable than a conventional belt because they feel padded and softer. Ford hopes this “comfort factor” could help improve the 61 percent rear belt usage rate in the U.S., which compares to 82 percent usage by front seat passengers, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.

“It’s a very simple and logical system, but it required extensive trial and error and testing over several years to prove out the technology and ensure precise reliable performance in a crash situation,” said Srini Sundararajan, safety technical leader for Ford research and advance engineering.

In fact, Ford introduced seat belts for its vehicles as optional equipment in 1955 and led the way in making driver and front-passenger air bags standard in most vehicles by 1993.

As for other advanced safety technologies, this year Ford introduced radar-enabled Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Collision Warning (CW) and its Blind Spot Information System (BLIS®) with Cross Traffic Alert (CTA). These technologies were introduced on the 2010 Ford Taurus and Fusion.

Bring on the advanced safety systems, Ford!

Sheryll Alexander is a lifestyles writer based in Costa Mesa, Calif. Follow me! @sheryllalexande
Select photos via Ford Motor Company

Over the last twenty years, the number of safety devices inside cars has grown by a considerable amount, but according to Ford Motor Company there is still room for improvement. Looking to improve on one of the simplest safety devices in a car, Ford has developed a seat belt with an integrated airbag for better protection for rear passengers. While front passengers get active head restraints, front airbags and seat belt pretensioners, rear-seat occupants usually only get a roof-mounted side-curtain airbag effective in reducing injuries during side-impact collisions and vehicle rollover incidents. Ford’s inflatable rear seat belt is just another aspect of the supplementary restraint system that is designed to provide maximum crash protection for all vehicle occupants.

Set to debut on the 2011 Ford Explorer, the inflatable seat belts not only help to spread the resulting forces of a crash over an area that is five times larger than a conventional seat belt, but they also control head and neck motion. Like any of the other airbags inside today’s car, when a collision is detected, the inflatable seat belts expand using a cold compressed gas that flows through a specially designed seat belt buckle. Ford says that the seat belt airbags deploy at a slower rate and at a lower pressure to prevent additional injuries, but the bags still inflate in a fraction of a second – just 40 milliseconds. Other than the unique buckle, the inflatable seat belts look and feel the same as a traditional seat belt, but they contain the hidden bag that splits the belt’s webbing when deployed. Ford also claims that an unexpected result of the new technology is a more comfortable seat belt meaning that more people are likely to buckle up.

According to Susan Cischke, Ford Motor Company group vice president of Sustainability, Environmental and Safety Engineering, only about 60 percent of rear-seat passengers actually wear their seatbelts including those most susceptible to injury: young children and the elderly.

“Ford’s rear inflatable seat belt technology will enhance safety for rear-seat passengers of all ages, especially for young children who are more vulnerable in crashes,” Cischke said. “This is another unique family technology that builds on our safety leadership, including the most top safety ratings of any automaker.”

Based on videos and animations released by Ford, the inflatable seat belts are designed for regular use and also with booster seats and child seats. From the buckle, about a two or three foot long section of the seat belt actually contains the airbag, and just like the other vehicle airbags, the seat belt will require replacement following airbag deployment. The inflatable rear seat belts deploy during frontal- and side-impact collisions.

Ford isn’t the only automaker planning to introduce this new safety device as Lexus plans to equip its upcoming supercar with similar seat belts for both passengers. While the 2011 Lexus LFA has a $375,000 price tag and seats just two, the 2011 Ford Explorer will likely be a three-row, seven-passenger family vehicle which is a much more fitting debut for such a technology. Eventually, Ford has said that the inflatable seat belts will spread to other multi-row Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles, while Lexus hasn’t announced any intentions of spreading it to other models. In the past, Ford has used the Explorer to showcase new and, at the time, innovative safety technologies such as side curtain canopy airbag and roll stability control.