Raising the bar in passenger safety, Ford Motor Company announced it produced the first-ever air-inflated seat belts to enhance rear-seat protection for passengers, most often found to be children and older passengers susceptible to head, chest and neck injuries, when it debuts on the next-gen Ford Explorer.

The rear-seat air-belts will matriculate to the rest of the Ford vehicle line over time once the product rollout begins domestically and then globally.

Ford notes that the rear seat belts spread crash forces over five times more area of the body than conventional seat belts; reducing pressure on the chest and as well as helping to control head and neck motion for rear seat passengers. Further, Ford research showed more than 90 percent of those who tested the inflatable seat belts found them to be similar to or more comfortable because they felt padded and softer. According to NHTSA stats, 82 percent of front seat passengers buckle up while only 61 percent do so in the rear seats. Ford hopes that the better feeling belts boost that safety statistic.

How it works

In the event of a crash, sensors deploy compressed gas that inflate the air bags. The gas travels through a specially designed buckle from a cylinder housed below the seat.

The gas fills the bag that breaks through the seat belt fabric, expanding sideways across the occupant’s body in about the same amount of time it takes a car traveling at highway speed to cover a yard (36 inches) of distance.

Using cold, compressed gas — instead of a heat-generating chemical reaction – which is typical of traditional air bag systems – means the inflated belts feel neither warmer nor colder than the passenger’s body temperature.  The belts also fill at a lower pressure and a slower rate than traditional air bags, because the device does not need to close a gap between the belt and the occupant, as it would with a front-seat occupant and the dashboard.

Ford Seat Belt History

Ford was the first automaker to use front and rear lap seat belts in 1955 and led the way in making driver and front-passenger air bags standard in most vehicles by 1993.

Ford’s other recent seat belt and air bag innovations include the industry-first BeltMinder system in 2000, which the U.S. government credited with increasing front belt usage by 5 percent in Ford vehicles.  On the 2002 Explorer, Ford launched the industry’s first rollover-activated side curtain air bags – called Safety Canopy – as well as Roll Stability Control technology that goes a step beyond traditional stability control systems by helping measure and prevent side-to-side skidding and dangerous situations that could lead to rollovers.

Ford also introduced on the 2009 F-150 and 2010 Taurus some of the industry’s first pressure-based air bag technologies that help deploy side air bags up to 30 percent faster.