Ford wants you to feel safe while you’re traveling in the back of their fifteen passenger Transit van, and thus they’ve introduced the industry’s first full-length curtain airbag. It has been specifically designed to “help provide enhanced head and neck protection in rollover and side-impact crashes.”
It’s about three times larger than a conventional side airbag that you’d find in a sedan, and it works the same as any airbag you know. Ford says that, despite its larger volume of gas, it still inflates instantly, and it has been engineered to deploy evenly and then remain inflated for another few seconds after impact.
The airbag itself measures 15 feet (4.6 m) in length and it was developed in partnership with TRW Automotive, a global supplier of active and passive safety systems.
However, it’s only one of many systems designed to make the Transit safe; standard kit includes front-seat side airbags for the driver and front passenger, three-point safety belts for all seats, AdvanceTrac with Roll Stability Control and SOS Post-Crash Alert System.
By Andrei Nedelea
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