Air bags' risk to kids should be addressed

A couple of years ago, air bags sounded like a magic bullet for automobile safety. Together with seat belts, the devices were sure to reduce serious injuries from car crashes. Ralph Nader's old "unsafe at any speed" warning seemed destined for the junk heap.

So the federal government, largely on the enthusiastic advice of safety experts like John Graham of Harvard University and the Center for Risk Analysis, made first driver-side and then passenger-side air bags mandatory for all new vehicles.

Tests and actual crashes indicate the driver-side bags are quite valuable. But the experience of air bags on the passenger side has been less than ideal. In fact, Graham is now convinced that in some circumstances, the force of the rapidly-expanding "cushions" do more harm than good.

That's what Graham told the National Transportation Safety Board in hearings on the devices this week. What automakers didn't take into account with their one-size-fits-all technology is that not all passengers are the same size. Some of them are, indeed, very small, and it would appear little thought was given to what an explosive air bag could do to a fragile child in the front passenger seat.

Graham testified air bags themselves have killed at least 38 children and that a grand total of none - zero - have been saved by them. Even the federal government's own findings conclude that for every two children saved by the bags, seven more will be killed.

That means the air bag mandate, which also forbids owners from disabling them, virtually guarantees more children will be killed. Yet the government's campaign to promote air bags has been so successful that a recent poll shows 60 percent of Americans believe more children are saved than harmed by them.

The outcome of this week's hearings is uncertain. But at the least, the federal bureaucracy should make passenger-side bags optional for new-car buyers or allow car owners who might be transporting small children to deactivate them.

In the meantime, drivers with children - whether their cars have passenger-side air bags or not - should remember that the safest place in the vehicle for those children is in a safety harness in the back seat.