However, a car can still be defective even if it complies with FMVSS 208, as it represents only a minimum standard; carmakers are free to exceed the requirements of FMVSS 208, and they should clearly do so.  State laws relating to negligence, strict liability (defective products), breach of warranty, and others impose a duty on the car companies to use reasonable care in designing and manufacturing their cars and avoiding defects in them.  As an airbag lawyer, I see many cases where the manufacturer claims to have complied with all applicable safety standards and yet there are airbag defects.  These problems range from unwarranted deployments and late deployments to airbag-induced injuries and failure to deploy.  Furthermore, millions of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs have been recalled to fix airbag safety defects, even though each of those vehicles was originally claimed to have met its safety standards.

The injury criteria used in the federal standards have evolved in the past decade as frontal airbag systems have evolved, but are summarized below for the 50^th percentile male test dummy. There are also injury criteria for other size crash test dummies, including those representing a 5^th percentile (small-stature) female, 6 year old child, 3 year old child, and 12 month old child (using the CRABI Child Restraint Air Bag Interaction test dummy). Additional information can be found in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 571.208, as well as part 572.

INJURY CRITERIA FOR 50^th PERCENTILE MALE HYBRID III TEST DUMMY

Pre-depowered airbags (generally prior to 1998 model year):

1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 1000 (36 ms maximum)
3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 3 inches
5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds

Depowered airbags (generally beginning with the 1998 model year):

1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 1000 (36 ms maximum)
3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 3 inches
5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds
6. Neck flexion (forward bending) moment: 190 Nm
7. Neck extension (rearward bending) moment: 57 Nm

  Advanced airbags (phased in beginning generally with the 2004 model year):

1. All portions of the test dummy shall be contained within the outer surfaces of the vehicle passenger compartment
2. Head Injury Criterion (HIC) limit: 700 (15 ms maximum)
3. Chest acceleration limit: 60 g’s
4. Chest compression (deflection) limit: 63 mm (2.5 inches)
5. Femur loading (force) limit: 2250 pounds
6. Neck tension limit: 4170 N (937 pounds)
7. Neck compression: 4000 N (899 pounds)
8. Combined neck injury (Nij) limit: 1.0 (for any combination of tension-extension, tension-flexion, compression-extension or compression-flexion)