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An American study of fatal road crashes shows airbags don't prevent many more car crash fatalities than seatbelts. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security and forget to buckle up your seat belt just because you have airbags. Unless they're flogging sex and speed, car manufacturers just love to tell us about how many airbags they've managed to squeeze in front and to the side of us. But just how much benefit are we getting from all this expense - which is quite considerable should a bag pop out on you. The answer from an American study of over 51,000 road crashes, is not much. They looked at fatal crashes where there was a driver and passenger involving cars with no airbags, one driver's side air bag, and two front seat airbags. The first thing to say was that wearing seatbelts reduced the risk of dying in a road crash by 65% and compared to that, the extra benefit of airbags was small. In collisions around the front end of the car, there's a further 12% reduction, with an overall average reduction in death risk by about 8%. And women seemed to benefit more than men, which is interesting because it contradicts other studies which suggested that women are at increased risk of injury with airbags perhaps because they're shorter. The explanation in this case was that men who are usually heavier may be more likely to hit the steering wheel. So the message is that airbags don't offer much more than seatbelts and that you shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security by airbags and stop buckling up.
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