By Leftlane Staff
Thursday, Dec 29th, 2005 @ 1:00 pm

Automakers are working to improve rollover safety by increasing the role of side-curtain airbags. Side curtains typically inflate when vehicles are hit in the side, but they don’t always activate in a rollover. More than half the nearly 10,000 people killed each year in rollover crashes are completely ejected from their vehicles. “To protect people in rollovers, you’ve got to keep them inside of the vehicles,” says Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “You need curtains that stay deployed.” Side curtains usually stay inflated at least four seconds, even though most side-impact crashes last only milliseconds, says Manley Ford , a spokesman for auto supplier TRW. But if a vehicle is rolling over, it’s important that the bag deploy and stay inflated for at least six seconds in case the vehicle continues to roll.

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