Toyota Working on First Rear-Seat Center Airbag

And you thought they were running out of places to put airbags.

Now that side curtain airbags are increasingly becoming standard issue, Toyota went in search of other key points of injury in accidents. One of the few places that airbags couldn’t seem to help was the space between the two passengers in the backseat. During a side collision, the two occupants can collide violently.

This led the automaker to develop the very first rear-seat center airbag, which deploys from a compartment in the roof. Presumably, a sensor will stop it if there’s someone sitting in that middle seat.

Toyota says the new airbag will debut this year in a model set to be launched in Japan, but there’s no word on which model or when we’ll see it in the U.S.

Comments

The airbag
that Toyota has for sale isn't the best safety part that Toyota offers. The belts are more purpose serving the airbags are secondary to the Toyota seat belts.

This seems like a great concept but how safe is it for younger children. Can it be harmful or dangerous to them when deployed?