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Perhaps in response to the concerns raised in regards to rear-seat safety by the super compact Toyota iQ, Toyota unveiled today the world’s first rear-seat center airbag. Obviously designed to reduce the iQ from “screaming metal” to simply “metal” deathtrap, the new center airbag is intended to provide a buffer between the two closely-seated rear passengers in the event they are sandwiched together like sardines during a side-impact collision. Hyped as an “impressive advancement in safety”, we can’t help but think that if a vehicle is so small that rear-seat passengers - even if properly restrained - are still in danger of colliding with one another, it will probably be crushed like a soda can before the airbags can even deploy.

What strikes as as even more bizarre is the fact that some have even heralded Toyota’s new invention as a triumph over the reigning king of safety, Volvo. What they have neglected to take into account, however, is the fact that Volvo (whose motto is: “Rolling Strength”) would never produce something so ineffectually small and obviously dangerous as the iQ to begin with, thus never necessitating the use of something like a rear-center airbag.

Source: AutoNews