How Do Car Airbags Work?

Curious Kids Every Day: A Daily Educational Podcast

This episode explains the mechanical process behind car airbag deployment during a collision. It covers how sensors detect impacts, how gas-

Key takeaways

• Airbags are stored tightly folded in components like steering wheels or dashboards.
• Crash sensors measure sudden changes in movement to determine if an impact is severe enough to deploy.

Main topics

• Airbag storage and location
• Crash sensor technology

Notable quotes

The airbag inflates in less time than that.

Conclusion

Listeners gain a clear understanding of the rapid, high-tech coordinat

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) How do car airbags work? Hi! Welcome to Curious Kids Every Day. I'm Josh. How are you doing Speaker 1 (0:14) today? It's so good to hear from you. Hey, do you know what car airbags do? Speaker 2 (0:27) Well, believe it or not, your car has hidden bags that come out only in case of an emergency. It could be hiding in different places all around the inside of the car. And if your car has a serious impact, like hitting another car or a solid object like a wall or something, some of those hidden bags can pop out. Speaker 2 (0:57) what the point of those airbags is? Well, they're kind of like cushions that soften the blow if your body is suddenly thrown forward or sideways. So instead of the person driving the car hitting the steering wheel, an airbag can inflate between the driver and the steering wheel. Yep, there is most likely an airbag folded up inside the steering wheel of your car right now. I had to explain what car airbags were to my kids the other day. They didn't know about them at all. And that got me wondering, how on earth do airbags work? I realized that I didn't know. I was thinking about this today because I got a question from a curious kid named Claus. Claus was curious, how do airbags work? Well, I decided to find out today. Speaker 2 (2:04) Alright, so when airbags do pop out, they're nice and puffy, but that's not how they sit inside of the steering wheel or inside of the walls of your car. Speaker 2 (2:18) Instead, the bag is folded up extremely tightly inside a small compartment. For a driver's front airbag, like I already said, it's usually folded inside the steering wheel. It could also be inside the dashboard, though. And many cars also have airbags along the sides of the seats or above the windows. So how does the car know when to open them? Speaker 2 (2:45) Cars have crash sensors. The moment a crash begins, these sensors measure what's happening to the car. They can detect how suddenly the car's movement is changing and help the car's airbag control system figure out how severe the impact is. And this part is important because airbags are not supposed to pop out every time