Hyundai wants to keep your packages safe, patents crotch airbags

Image credit: CarBuzz
Ensuring the safety of your occupants and fragile packages should be the utmost priority as you’re driving, so Hyundai’s latest patent, an airbag for the crotch, has got us thinking, “How did we live without this for so long?!”
Yes, yes, we get it, the imagery is pretty funny. But in reality its no hanky-panky invention, as this seat-mounted airbag helps prevent ‘submarining’, a problem where smaller occupants can slip underneath a conventional seat belt.
Even if you don’t slide all the way through, the force of a car crash plus the movement of a seat belt along a journey can cause it to tighten around your stomach instead, resulting in internal organ damage in the event of a collision.

Image: US Patent Trade Office, via CarBuzz
Hyundai’s T-shaped airbags – featuring a slim inflatable support section linked by an inflatable horizontal bar, and put in place by fabric tethers – aims to solve this problem.
How they work is that it deploys from the seat base between occupants’ thighs, locking a person in place in the event of an accident.

Unlike traditional airbags these are load-sensing, as it’s capable of measuring exactly where an occupant is located on the seat base, and can deploy at varying intensity. For example, if it detects the person is not in a suitable position (or in a posture where the airbag going off can cause more damage), it can decide to not deploy at all, according to CarBuzz’s report.
It always blows to be in a car crash, and Hyundai’s new creation seems to be very handy to have in such situations. Now though the challenge is…what should they name it?