Filed under: Sedan, Safety, Technology, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury
The airbag turns 30 - Click above for high-res image gallery
No, the above headline isn't a greeting for your spouse on his or her special day -
Daimler is celebrating the airbag's 30th anniversary. Three decades ago, the very first production car with the life-saving safety tech rolled off the line, kicking off an industry-wide push for ever safer vehicles in the process. That car was an
S-Class sedan, and
Mercedes-Benz says that the company had poured a total of 13 years of research and development into the project before it ever hit the street. Today, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that airbags have helped to save around 28,000 lives since the technology was first introduced - and that's just in the good old U.S. of A.
The government safety authority also says that in a typical accident, a driver wearing his or her seatbelt in a vehicle with an airbag is 61 percent less likely to be injured than those who skip the belt in vehicles with no airbag. There's no arguing that we've come a long way in a relatively short period of time.
These days, you'd be hard pressed to find a vehicle without at least some form of supplemental restraint, and
Mercedes-Benz says that all of its products have featured a standard driver airbag since 1992.
Hit the jump for the full press blast - but not before checking the high-res gallery below for some retro S-Class fabulousness.
[Source: Mercedes-Benz]
Continue reading Happy 30th anniversary, airbag!
Happy 30th anniversary, airbag! originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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25-09-2010, 09:07 PM
