You have to love new technology - and you have to love Ford's desire to get out in front of the universe when it comes to harnessing new technology in well, a harness. Ford's wacky thinking engineers - the folks who came up with SYNC and other cool stuff, have figured out how to put an airbag in a seatbelt.
The airbags in a seatbelt are set to debut in the 2011 Ford Explorer and will be available for rear seat passengers only. The logic is this: kids and older folks are more likely to be in the back seat and they're the ones that can be hurt the most in a collision causing head and neck injuries.
The airbags in the seatbelt inflate a little slower than traditional airbags but form a cushion that keeps the passenger's head from jerking forward and to the side.
The best way to understand how it works is to go to the video on YouTube, which shows the seatbelts in action and has a couple of talking heads explaining why it's so cool. Here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5dFCveh2c
This is just one more example, if you ask me, of how smart companies are making vehicles safer. Although the airbag in a seatbelt is optional, if you have kids and they ride with you a lot, well, there really isn't much to think about.
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