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The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) estimates that airbags installed in automobiles have
saved some 10,000 lives as of January 2004. A just-released study by a statistician
at the University of Georgia, however, casts doubt on that assertion.
In fact, said UGA statistics professor Mary C. Meyer, a new analysis of existing
data indicates that, controlling for other factors, airbags are actually associated
with slightly increased probability of death in accidents.
“NHTSA recorded 238 deaths due to airbags between 1990 and 2002, according
to information about these deaths on their Web site,” said Meyer. “They
all occurred at very low speeds, with injuries that could not have been caused
by anything else. But is it reasonable to conclude that airbags cause death
only at very low speeds? It seems more likely that they also cause deaths at
high speeds, but these are attributed to the crash.
The study was published this summer in the magazine Chance.
The new analysis directly contradicts earlier studies about the effectiveness
of airbags, which have been required for drivers and front-seat passengers
in all cars since the 1998 model year in the United States.
“When we look at the random sample of all accidents, we find that airbags
are associated with increased risk of death,” she said, “and this
increase is due to more deaths with airbags in low-speed crashes and no seatbelts.
However, if we limit the dataset to include only collisions in which a fatality
occurred, we get a significantly reduced risk of death due to airbags.”
By way of analogy, the Meyer explained it this way: “If you look at
people who have some types of cancer, you will see that those who get radiation
treatment have a better chance of surviving than those who don’t. However,
radiation is inherently dangerous and could actually cause cancer. If you give
everyone radiation treatments, whether they have cancer or not, you will probably
find an increased risk of death in the general population.
The new study directly contradicts assertions about airbag safety on the NHTSA
Web site, said Meyer. The correct analysis is important to obtain now, because
in only a few years, there will be virtually no cars on the road without airbags.
“We are confident that our analyses better reflect the actual effectiveness
of airbags in the general population [than earlier studies],” said Meyer. “The
evidence shows that airbags do more harm than good.”
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According
to UGA statistics professor Mary C. Meyer, a new analysis of existing data
indicates that, controlling for other factors, airbags are actually associated
with slightly increased probability of death in accidents.
