With airbags being stuffed into every corner of the car for maximum protection, South Korean component maker Hyundai Mobis, part of the Hyundai Motor Group, claims to have developed the world’s first airbag system for sunroofs.
According to reports from the Korean Herald, there is a growing demand for sunroof in vehicles and seeing it as an important safety juncture, the company worked on various prototypes and undertook tests to find the results for coming up with the optimal solution. It concluded that the shortlisted panoramic sunroof airbag will be an integrated mounting module inside the panoramic sunroof module, which will be deployed from the rear to the front along the development wire type guider. In order to develop the ejection mitigation performance, the double cushion structure type of delay cushion type was applied to the optimum cushion type to secure the performance of the present level of curtain airbag. The developed airbag takes 0.08 second to go off and prevent serious neck and head injuries in a rollover accident.
The component maker had submitted a study to the US-based safety agency National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTA). It mentions that the thought behind the concept of a sunroof airbag came from the idea to enhance the safety of passengers during a collision or rollover of a vehicle. In a sunroof equipped vehicle, the risk for injury to occupants could be higher. Hyundai Mobis would hope to bag orders particularly for panoramic sun roofs in SUVs in the world's $5.3 billion airbag market.
