Toronto, Ontario — Eric Heitkamp, an engineer at Honda, has been honoured with the U.S. Government Award for Safety Engineering Excellence for his work on creating a “groundbreaking” passenger air bag system with proven life-saving capabilities.
Heitkamp, alongside eight others, was recognized at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Enhanced Safety of Vehicles conference, held in Yokohama, Japan this past week.
Honda says that Heitkamp’s airbag design was aimed at side collisions where a passenger’s head may “rotate severely at high velocity and slide off a conventional airbag, increasing the chance of serious injury.”
The development of this innovative airbag design built directly upon a landmark 2013 study on brain injuries in auto collisions, led by the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to Honda.
“Rather than the single inflatable chamber of conventional front passenger airbag systems, the new airbag operates something like a baseball catcher’s mitt, with an uninflated panel first catching and decelerating the occupant’s head with less force, while also directing it inward between two inflated chambers to cradle and protect the head,” read Honda’s press release.
“Specifically, the new passenger front airbag uses four major components: three inflated compartments consisting of a center chamber and two outward-projecting side chambers that create a wide base across the dash and the uninflated ‘sail panel’ that stretches between the two side chambers.”
Check out a video of Heitkamp’s airbag in action down below.
