Airbags and Hand Injuries
2009 June 22
Ken Thompson says that one second his right thumb was just fine, and then it was almost torn off. What happened in between was that the driver’s-side air bag deployed.Dr. Thompson, a psychiatrist who lives in Pittsburgh, was honking the horn of his 2006 BMW 325xi to warn a vehicle that had pulled in front of him. The cars hit, and Dr. Thompson’s air bag deployed from the minor impact. The other car drove off. And then Dr. Thompson looked at his thumb.
“My right thumb is just basically hanging,” he said. “I had what they call a partial amputation. That is the only injury I sustained.”
The problem, Dr. Thompson said, is that his BMW, like many other vehicles, has the horn button as part of the air-bag cover. “So if you are hitting the horn, you are hitting the air-bag cover,” he said. “If the horn had not been where the air bag was I would have had no injury at all.”
That is the beginning of a recent article published on the “Wheels” blog at the New York Times’ website. It is not clear how many of these types of injuries occur. However, they are not uncommon. The article went on to note:
William Smock, an emergency room doctor and professor at the University of Louisville Hospital, said he had seen over the last decade about 25 cases of hand and arm injuries caused by air bags. These range from minor abrasions to amputations.
While these are not the typical automotive defects that have been popularized in the media, they are real and dangerous. Automakers understand that accidents occur and should do everything within their power to minimize the types of injuries discussed above.
