GM's New Air Bag Passenger Sensing System Helps Protect Smaller Front-Seat Passengers

October 30, 2002

Despite Technology, Children Are Still Safer In The Back Seat, Properly Restrained

DETROIT - General Motors' new, industry-leading passenger sensing system is designed to help protect children from potential injuries or fatalities in the event they are seated in front of an inflating frontal air bag. However, GM child passenger safety experts continue to stress to parents and caregivers that despite this technology, the back seat is still the safest place for transporting children.

The passenger sensing system, standard in about 1.6 million 2003 GM full-size pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is designed to turn off the passenger frontal air bag if it detects a rear-facing child seat, forward-facing child seat, booster seat child restraint or child in the front passenger seating position. It also is designed to turn off the air bag if no occupant is detected.

"The men and women who developed and implemented this system, many of whom are parents themselves, performed more than 3,000 tests and drew on nearly a decade of experience evaluating and developing passenger presence systems to ensure that the system would be reliable," said Bill Kemp, GM executive director of safety strategy.

"However, even in vehicles equipped with the passenger sensing system, we urge all families to transport their children properly restrained in the rear seating position. In addition, we recommend that children 12 and under who outgrow child restraints ride in the back seat, properly restrained."

GM's passenger sensing system detects the level of pressure on the front passenger seat and the tension on the seat belt, two ways that help determine what kind of occupant may be present in the seat. Unlike air bag on/off switches that are manually activated, the new passenger sensing system is automatic, and a light on the rear-view mirror indicates the system status at all times.

In the event of a crash of sufficient severity, the right frontal air bag is designed not to deploy if the system detects pressure at or below what a six-year-old child in a booster seat produces, even when belted with up to 30 pounds of tension. (Child restraints produce more tension on a seat belt.)

The right frontal air bag is designed to deploy in a crash of sufficient severity if a person of adult size is sitting properly in the right front passenger's seat.

The National SAFE KIDS Campaign also recommends that children are safer in the back seat, and offers these tips for properly restraining children in a vehicle:

Infants should ride in rear-facing safety seats as long as possible; until they are at least 12 months old and weigh at least 20 pounds. Never put a rear-facing infant or convertible safety seat in the front seat of a vehicle with an active passenger air bag.
Children who are at least 1 year old and weigh between 20 and 40 pounds and can no longer ride in rear-facing seats should ride in forward-facing child safety seats.
Children over 40 pounds should be correctly secured in belt-positioning boosters or other appropriate child restraints until the adult lap and shoulder belts fit correctly (around age 8).
Once the vehicle safety belts fit children, both lap and shoulder belts should be correctly used. When the child is sitting all the way back against the vehicle seat, the lap belt should fit across the child's hips, not the stomach. The shoulder belt should cross the center of the shoulder.
Do not let children put shoulder belts under their arms or behind their backs. This could result in serious injuries in the event of a crash.

Learn more about how child restraints work and how to use them at www.gmability.com, www.ourpreciouscargo.com and your vehicle and child restraint owners' manuals.