Analysis of Burn Injuries in Frontal Automobile Crashes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate burn injuries resulting from frontal automobile crashes and to determine the effects of frontal airbags on the incidence of burn injuries. The study included 25,464 individual cases from the National Automotive Sampling System database files for the years 1993 to 2000. Occupants were at a significantly higher risk to sustain a burn injury when exposed to an airbag deployment (1.54%) compared with those who received a burn injury when not exposed to an airbag deployment (0.02%; P = 0.02). In contrast to previous publications, this study found that 1.53% of front seat occupants exposed to an airbag deployment sustained an airbag-induced burn injury. The vast majority of airbag-induced burn injuries were minor (98.7%); however, in cases with no airbag deployment, the burns were often much more serious, including fatal burns (29.6%). Occupant weight, height, sex, seatbelt use, and seat position were all found not to be significant in predicting the risk of airbag induced burn injury, whereas age and crash velocity were found to be significant.

The unassuming danger of car airbags: Injuries secondary to airbag deployment

“…3 With reference to the literature plethora of burns has been cited, including ocular, facial and inhalational. 10,7,4,6 Rapid deceleration of the motor vehicle triggers the combustion of various chemicals, including sodium azide, sulphur and potassium nitrate resulting in rapid nitrogen production which inflates the bag, Fig.…”

Experimental analysis of airbag seam design: high-rate shear testing for skin abrasions

“…It is anticipated that this research will augment the design of future airbag systems. While airbags have proved to be very beneficial, they still result in injuries to the face [28][29][30] and upper extremities [31,32]. The abrasion mechanism presented in the current paper applies the dynamic velocity required for the tissue loading to be relevant to field applications [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

Burn injuries resulting from (accidental) airbag inflation

“…Burn injuries secondary to airbag deployment is known to occur (Heimbach, 2000;Reilly and Garner, 2000;Dumortier et al, 2001;Pham et al, 2001;Ulrich et al, 2001;Hendrickx et al, 2002;Jernigan et al, 2002;Knudsen, 2002). Scar-formation after airbag burns has been described, but is fortunately exceedingly rare (Vitello et al, 1999;Dumortier et al, 2001;Hendrickx et al, 2002).…”