In a recent incident, car owner claims non-functioning of airbag in his Maruti car. The car is equipped with two airbags that are supposed to prevent injuries during an accident. The airbags were supposed to open at the time of a collision but they did not work and driver got injuries.

Car manufacturers follow many safety measures in the car. Seat-belt is very common and statistics have shown that the use of seat belts has saved thousands of lives that might have been lost in collisions. To increase safety during an accident, car-airbag has been installed in many models as an additional features. The concept of the airbag has been around for many years. Its cost varies from 1 lac to 2 lac (depending upon the model).

How car airbag works?

Airbag is a soft pillow to land against in a crash. What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passenger’s speed to zero with little or no damage. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. The airbag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. Even that tiny amount of space and time is valuable, however, if the system can slow the passenger evenly rather than forcing an abrupt halt to his or her motion.

How do you make sure if this is functional?. You need to get it checked from your car dealer / service station. Probably they must have some technique to show you how airbag will open up.

Maruti Suzuki served legal notice on non-functioning airbags

http://auto.howstuffworks.com