The statistics are common knowledge. More than 82 million of the 200 million cars and light trucks on U.S. roads have driver's side air bags, and 54 million of these also have passenger's side air bags. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 3,625 people are alive today because of their air bags.

Yet each time an air bag is deployed, another air bag must be installed. The average cost of a new air bag manufactured by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is $600. However, recyclers can take a non-deployed air bag from a totaled vehicle and resell it. The average price of these air bags can range from $150-$300.

Thus, the business of reselling salvaged air bags would appear to be an entrepreneurial dream. But it's not.

Mike West, owner of Southtowne Auto Rebuild Inc. in Tukwila, Wash., was a panelist in a salvaged air bag seminar that took place at the International Autobody Congress and Exposition (NACE) in Dallas during December. West said, "In regard to the use of salvaged or used air bags, we do not use them. We have never used them. There is no incentive from our perspective to entice us to use salvaged air bags. ASA doesn't recommend the use of used air bags. I-CAR doesn't recommend the use of used or salvaged air bags. The insurance industry doesn't recommend their use. The OEMs specifically state to use only new parts manufactured and purchased from them through their dealer network when servicing supplemental restraint systems."

West speaks for many collision repair shop owners who see the lack of support from manufacturers, insurers and a large number of trade organizations. Because of this, some collision repair shop owners would consider it tantamount to professional suicide to install a salvaged air bag in a vehicle they are repairing.

At the same time, they also recognize that the installation of salvaged air bags could be the key to opening many more cars up to repair. Ben Steinman, of Ben's Autobody CARSTAR in Mexico, Mo., said, "One of my main concerns we're going to be seeing with air bags is many more cars being totaled because of air bags. Passenger air bags are a much greater expense, because when they deploy they will break the dashboard, will bust out the windshield. You just went from a $600 single air bag to $2,500 for dual air bags. You take a three- or four-year-old car with dual air bags that deploy, and you may have only $4,000 of damage to the body, but there are air bags so it's totaled."

Douglas Hansen, however, does not believe that the air bag necessarily totals the car. Hansen is currently president of Airbag Service, a company that offers inspection, repair and replacement services for air bags in vehicles. He has been involved with air bags since the early 1970s when he was a senior project engineer for the Rocket Research Company, which was one of the original players in designing and developing air bags. He said about many collision repairers, "They blame air bags for the car totaling, but what about the fenders, the grill? The crash totaled the car. If you're going to use used parts, you should probably start somewhere else."

The major point of contention in the issue of salvaged air bags is a lack of information about the product and its risks. A salvaged air bag is one that has been removed from a totaled car and resold to repair another car. Some argue that any number of things could have happened to the air bag before it is placed in the second car. In the original car, it could have been sun-damaged or rain-damaged. It could have been damaged in the collision that totaled the car. Once removed from the car, it could have been damaged through mishandling by the recycler. And when installed in the second car, the air bag may not even be the correct air bag for that car. If it is not the correct air bag, it might look correct, but it may not function.

Mark Buessing, president of the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), rebuts all of these claims. He also comes armed with statistics.

In September, ARA, with Garwood Laboratories Inc., conducted static deployment tests of five new OEM air bag modules and 196 undeployed, recycled air bag modules. All the air bags that were tested deployed, with the OEM air bags deploying in an average of 32 milliseconds and 195 of the 196 recycled air bags deploying in an average of 29-32 milliseconds. One recycled air bag, however, did not deploy for a full 400 milliseconds, "an obvious failure," as Buessing described. That bag was discovered to have been a flood air bag module, an air bag that had been exposed to significant amounts of rain or other water in its original vehicle.

Commenting on the results of the test, Buessing said, "Professional automotive recyclers understand the need to deploy [destroy] air bag modules that have been subjected to flood, burn and collision damage. However, we also recognize that there is a significant difference between an air bag module that has been subjected to damage and one that is intact and undamaged. Automotive recyclers routinely receive vehicles that have been involved in rear-end and/or side impact collisions where the air bag would not have been intended to deploy. These intact recycled OEM air bag modules offer the motoring public a safe and economic alternative in a repair process to the more costly new OEM units."

Steinman, who attended the ARA testing, attests to the fact that the air bags deployed were certainly no better than the salvaged air bag that one might usually find.

"I physically handled the air bags, and those were not the pick of the litter. If you had a litter of pigs, these would be the ugly ones," said Steinman.

Steinman said he felt better after seeing how the salvaged air bags performed, yet he added, "One hundred and ninety-five deployed and one failed. It doesn't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling."

And what about the air bag that took 400 milliseconds to deploy? Buessing explained that some of the air bags tested by Garwood Laboratories actually came from an uncompleted previous test with another nationally recognized research facility. The facility conducting the previous test, said Buessing, was not interested in testing only the salvaged air bags that were suitable to be resold, and also collected many air bags that the average recycler would deploy instead of selling.

The Garwood Laboratory testing, however, was done with the idea that the air bags involved were what would usually be sold in the marketplace. "When we got the failure, we did a stock number check, called the recycler it came from and found out [it was a flood air bag]. We should have checked beforehand," Buessing said.

Hansen agreed. About the air bag testing he said, "You're running top-level controls and a flood air bag sneaks through? A failure rate of one in 200 - that's pretty unacceptable." Hansen said an acceptable failure rate when engineering a new air bag is closer to one in a million. He also said that even if all 201 of the tested air bags fired perfectly, from the engineering standpoint, it wouldn't mean anything.

"It's not the criteria used at the engineering level to determine if the systems are good or bad. That would involve taking the systems apart, which we don't have the capability of doing. It was a market test more than anything," Hansen said.

Collision repairers' concerns of reliability also touch on the reliability of the recycler to sell a salvaged air bag that is undamaged and the proper module for their particular vehicle. At the NACE panel, Buessing said recyclers understand the need to deploy a flood air bag rather than reuse it. He added, however, that the flood air bag that failed in the Garwood Laboratories test was strikingly recognizable as such, "with corrosion in the back, corrosion on the rivets, and sand and grit. Of course, the corrosion would probably be your best way to identify that there is a problem with the bag when you get it."

"Unfortunately," said Buessing, "the only control that you can have, I think, as collision repairers, is to deal with a responsible automotive recycler that has product liability insurance and that you know they're going to sell that bag to you with the VIN number on that invoice so that there is tracking, and there is tracing, and if it needs to be traced, we can determine how that car was totaled. And if it's been in a flood, I wouldn't put that air bag in."

Steinman was confident that most salvage yards would not knowingly sell a flood air bag. "Hopefully, I would say if it was a respectable salvage yard, no. If it was Gold Seal, no. If just an average yard, no. A bad yard might have reduced the price and sold it anyway."

Steinman was not so confident on other handling issues. He said, "I wonder how many people would throw away a $600 air bag if they dropped it when no one was looking." Of course, these handling issues also apply to new OEM air bags. Both new OEM and salvaged air bags are often shipped great distances and many collision repairers at NACE bore witness to the sight of new air bags "bouncing around in the back of a [delivery] truck."

John Watkins, also of Airbag Service, said that this was the reason air bag manufacturers take great care in designing the packaging in which they ship their air bags. With a salvaged air bag, he said, there is no way to be sure that it hasn't been damaged until it is deployed.

"The bag is probably good when it is removed from the car," said Watkins. "It's after it's removed from the car when the problems begin."

Buessing said that ARA has been working with its members for the past year to ensure that they know proper handling and shipping methods for salvaged air bags. With the participation of the Automotive Occupant Restraints Council (AORC), ARA produced a free video for its members on the proper procedures for recycling air bags. The video details proper removal, handling, storage, shipping and deployment of recycled air bag modules, both in and out of the vehicle.

Buessing also takes issue with the fear that, because they may look alike, an improper air bag module may be delivered to be installed in a vehicle. According to Buessing, recyclers match parts not by appearance, but by part number.

"An automotive recycler is going to match part numbers. If you call us up and ask us for a '95 Accord air bag module, we're going to look into our interchange and see that it's a '95 Accord only. It's going to have only one part number in that book. And if on any of these models there happens to be triggering mid-year, there's going to be two separate part numbers, and guess what? We're going to ask the before serial number, or the after serial number [of the vehicle]. So this isn't rocket science. We're going to match part numbers just like you're going to match with a new OEM dealer."

Clearly, collision repairers have a range of concerns about the risks of using salvaged air bags - some can be addressed more easily than others. Some of these concerns involve the issue of trust. When a product is offered without any sort of certification, and without the support of networks such as the OEMs, the insurers and many aftermarket associations, a collision repairer may feel left at the mercy of the automotive recyclers. That is why many propose a recertification process to make salvaged air bags a more confident option.

Hansen has some concrete ideas about what this certification process should contain. "We think that responsible recycling is a viable possibility," he said. "We just haven't seen the responsible engineering work done yet. If you could take the product and send it someplace and they'll inspect it and do a helium leak test, and X-ray it and do real engineering, and then you could hand the product back to the industry with a $5 million policy, it wouldn't be salvaged anymore, it would be rebuilt."

Jim Busch, of Issaquah, Wash., another panelist at the NACE seminar, said he would use a salvaged air bag under certain conditions and presented the scenario of an air bag that was returned to Ford, recycled by Ford and sent to a Ford authorized sales help network. "Then, I would have the backing of that company behind me if I made that choice. To me that's very important," said Busch.

Buessing proposes another solution. Many collision repairers are concerned that if they should install a salvaged air bag, and it should fail to deploy properly in an accident, they could be at risk in a resulting lawsuit. Buessing said, "One of the discussions we've had at ARA just in recent months is to get a product liability policy for our members, an umbrella policy with a million-dollar deductible to cover this concern about liability."

Steinman agreed that if a salvaged air bag should fail, a resulting lawsuit could be larger than if a new OEM air bag was at issue. "It's because they're not endorsed by the collision industry. They're not a recommended procedure," he said.

Hansen said, "All insurance policies say you're going to follow manufacturer's procedures [which do not recommend salvaged air bags], so you might not be insured." Buessing, however, submitted the fact that even though salvaged air bags have been on the market since 1987, his product liability premiums have not gone up at all since that time.

At the salvaged air bag panel at NACE, one representative of the insurance industry stood up from the audience to give his opinion on the usefulness of a liability policy.

"We have a concern, the insurance business, when people say things like, 'As long as you have proper liability insurance.' That doesn't replace the injured person. It doesn't replace the person killed in that accident. The fact that liability insurance exists doesn't bring that back."

So the use of salvaged air bags remains an issue at contention. There is no known report of anyone being killed by a salvaged air bag failure. There is no known record of an injury being reported because a salvaged air bag failed to deploy properly in a crash. For collision repairers and opponents of the use of salvaged air bags, though, that is no consolation. They want industry support and they want certainty, and, for now, that just does not exist.

Julie A. Finn is the assistant to the ASA Collision Division director. She can be reached at (800) 272-7467.

ASA's Position on Salvaged Air Bags

The air bag is one of the most important automobile safety innovations in the last 10 years. Air bags have saved the lives of approximately 3,600 drivers and passengers. Of these, almost 70 percent were not belted. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) expects the number of lives saved each year to continue to increase as more and more vehicles on the road are equipped with air bags.

ASA discourages the use of salvaged air bags. Safety cannot be compromised in this important safety system. While the use of salvaged air bags can reduce cost, ASA believes that safety could be severely compromised and that shop owners could face a liability risk for installing salvaged air bags.

ASA recommends that all shops inquire with their insurance carriers regarding coverage and increases in rates before installing salvaged air bags, and that they get this information in writing.

Julie A. Finn is the assistant to the ASA Collision Division director. She can be reached at (800) 272-7467.

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