THE AIR-BAG-SAFETY SAGA

By John Greenwald

Amid the growing public concern over the mortal danger of air bags, it may be hard to imagine anyone's standing up and declaring that they are among the most effective safety devices ever developed for cars and trucks. Yet that is just what auto-safety experts like Ralph Hoar believe. "The debate over air bags has always been distorted," argues Hoar, a consultant in Arlington, Virginia. "Air bags have been sold as the silver bullet that will save you or the lead one that will kill you. They have been oversold and demonized."

Those demons have been running rampant in recent weeks. While air bags have saved more than 1,600 lives and averted thousands of crippling injuries since 1986, public attention has lately fastened on the fact that the devices, which bang open at speeds of up to 200 m.p.h., can be lethal as well. Since 1991, 51 victims--including 31 children--have been killed by air bags that slammed into them in low-speed crashes that might have been otherwise survivable. Many of the victims were not wearing seat belts. Among those particularly vulnerable: infants and small children placed in the front seat in rear-facing car seats that put small heads within inches of the onrushing bags.

Faced with the rising anxiety over air bags, which are currently found in 50 million vehicles on U.S. roads, federal safety officials last week pulled in the rules that regulate the devices for a thorough overhaul. "Air bags are working well," says Dr. Ricardo Martinez, who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "but need to be improved to enhance the safety of children and small-stature adults." Toward that end, the agency rolled out a five-part proposal for air bags that, if adopted after public hearings, would cover every passenger car and truck sold in the U.S. by the end of the decade.

The five points range from allowing consumers to disconnect air bags to requiring that a new generation of smart bags be phased in beginning with the 1999 model year. Martinez says the agency has been logging up to 500 phone calls a day from worried drivers and passengers who want to shut off or disable the safety devices. "When we take the time to explain how to use them properly," he says, "the vast majority [of callers] regain their comfort with air bags." However, the recent spate of publicity has taken its toll on public confidence. Declared a bystander outside the safety agency's news conference: "They're letting us disconnect them? Great. I don't want to be killed by an air bag."

But the proposal raised hackles among safety advocates and their traditional foes, the Big Three automakers in Detroit. "It's bad public policy," says Joan Claybrook, who led the NHTSA in the Carter Administration and now runs the watchdog group Public Citizen. "For the government to tell people it is O.K. to disconnect their air bags is a terrible idea that sends the wrong signal." Claybrook blames Washington and the car manufacturers for failing to instruct the public in basic matters such as never allowing small children to ride in front seats and wearing seat belts to make the air bags most effective.

Detroit, which for a decade fought air bags as being too expensive, now objects just as strenuously to disconnecting them. "The bottom line is that air bags in conjunction with seat belts save lives," says Chrysler spokesman Jason Vines. Concurs Lou Camp, the director of safety and engineering standards at Ford: "We believe that if the case for air bags is presented to customers properly, very few will choose to have them disconnected."

At the same time, carmakers enthusiastically endorsed the proposal to power down air bags, which reflected industry recommendations. Vines noted that Chrysler is already developing slower-speed air bags and expects to have them ready for the 1998 model year. "Every automaker in the world has come out in favor of depowering air bags," he says.

The harmony ends there, however, because Detroit is likely to resist the proposal for smart air bags. Automakers insist that elaborate systems tailored to the weight and position of each occupant would be difficult to engineer and test, and could add as much as $600 to the cost of each vehicle. But just as in its earlier opposition to air bags, Detroit may learn to live with all that extra trouble--and so too may the driving public.

--Reported by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit

With reporting by SALLY B. DONNELLY/WASHINGTON AND JOSEPH R. SZCZESNY/DETROIT