Sand and Balloons

New highway and auto-safety mea sures often make the cure seem worse than the disease. Seat belts save 2,000 to 2,500 lives annually, estimates the National Safety Council; yet motorists have to be cajoled into buckling them in stead of sitting on them. New super-lighways eliminate dangerous curves and intersections while creating new hazards in the form of bridge piers, complicated cloverleafs and, not least, driver boredom. Two new devices offer relatively painless and inexpensive ways to reduce crash damage without placing new burdens on the motorist.

The Auto-Ceptor crash-restraint system is especially useful for drivers of minicars. In case of collision, big nitrogen-inflated nylon balloons pop out of the steering column and dashboard, pinning motorists to their seats and keeping them from flying through the windshield. They deflate immediately after a crash, leaving motorists free to get out. Developed by Eaton, Yale & Towne Inc., the balloons would replace shoulder straps, which few motorists use any way (seat belts would still be needed for protection in rolling accidents). The Auto-Ceptor system works automatically: balloons inflate in one twenty-fifth of a second when the car's deceleration equals the rate that would occur on hitting a solid stone wall at 8 m.p.h. It is expected to cost about the same as belts and harnesses.

Crowded Dashboard. The Fitch Inertial Barrier System is designed to reduce damage from head-on collisions with fixed objects along the highway. Its principle is well known to operators of beach buggies: soft sand slows a vehicle down. In this system, large plastic drums of sand are grouped in front of bridge abutments, overpass piers, large sign stanchions and similar highway danger points. The drums break when hit by a speeding vehicle, absorbing much of the impact and scattering sand beneath the wheels to slow it further. Cheap and easy to install and replace, the Inertial Barrier System was invented by John Fitch, a former racing driver whose teammate accidentally killed himself and more than 80 spectators when he crashed through an old-fashioned race-track barrier at Le Mans, France.

The Auto-Ceptor system faces a two-to three-year delay before it sees even limited use. Major problem: finding space for the balloons in the already crowded dashboard area. Fitch's sand barrels, on the other hand, are being tested by the Connecticut State Highway Department, and New York and other states are interested in them.

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