George S. May Business Blog

Ford think ‘outside the box’ with inflatable seat belts

My biggest knock on Ford has been their inability to be innovative. It seems that somewhere in the last 20 years the American automaker fell behind and has never been able to catch up. Today, however, Ford will take a step to remove that stigma. Ford will be rolling out inflatable seat belts. Starting with the next-generation Explorer, Ford expects to have the inflatable seat belt for the rear seats.

According o Ford, inflatable seat belts will reduce the trauma that standard seat belts can inflict on both young children and seniors. Ford says the new system will reduce head, neck and chest trauma.

The technology is actually pretty cool, in that, the seat belts will look and function as usual. In the event of a crash, however, the seat belt will deploy the bag within 40 milliseconds of contact. What’s more, the airbags will fill up with cold compressed gas, rather than using the traditional chemical reaction that is heat generating.
Ford says the system will be introduced in future models down the line but gave no specifics on when it would hit family-friendly vehicles like the Flex and Taurus.

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