The world's first roof airbag technology developed by Hyundai Mobis has drawn attention from the U.S. government agency.
Hyundai Mobis said on March 26 that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted a safety assessment on roof airbags. A roof airbag is a device that protects passengers by covering the entire ceiling of a car when a car is overturned.
A Hyundai Mobis official said that the NHTSA released a research report titled "How to Mitigate Roof Escape of Passengers" at a seminar on government and industry-related technologies organized by the U.S. Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) in January, and also introduced data on the evaluation of Hyundai Mobis' roof airbag.
According to data on Hyundai Mobis' roof airbag released by NHTSA, experiments under various conditions showed that it has been effective in preventing sunroof passengers from leaving. Roof airbags spread in 0.08 seconds in the event of a rollover accident and prevent passengers from bouncing off the sunroof, reducing head and neck injuries.
Of the 13,700 subversive accidents that occurred in North America for 15 years from 2000, 2,400 cases were reported where passengers fled the vehicle, with 10 percent of them bouncing through the sunroof. However, it was an early-stage study, so it did not include any concrete results.
Hyundai Mobis developed the world's first panorama sunroof airbag in 2017 and roof airbag, which improved performance of mass-production, along with Inalfa, a company that specializes in manufacturing sunroof systems, last year. In a related move, Hyundai Mobis applied for 24 patents.
Last year, Hyundai Mobis even finished verifying reliability such as performance evaluation, durability, and environmental impact assessment if the roof airbag system is actually installed in the car. Hyundai Mobis has also been promoting and winning orders from carmakers in North America, Europe and China.
