Air-bag-associated fatal injuries to infants and children riding in front passenger seats--United States.

Air bags, when used as a supplement to safety belts, effectively prevent deaths and serious injuries in frontal motor-vehicle crashes. Air bags are standard equipment in most new cars; federal safety standards require that all new passenger cars and light trucks be equipped with both driver- and passenger-side air bags by 1999. The safety of air bags is well documented, and air bags have saved an estimated 900 lives since the late 1980s (1); however, special precautions are needed to safely transport children in vehicles equipped with air bags. Reports of eight deaths of child passengers in crashes involving air-bag deployment are of special concern because they involved low-speed crashes that the children otherwise might have survived. This report summarizes three of these eight cases (2).