Solution offered to vehicle recyclers as air bag era dawns

It is thought that about 10% of vehicles arising at scrapyards now have air bags, and this is expected to increase with time, as vehicles meeting tougher safety standards come to the end of their lives.

” The only logical, cost-effective way to deal with this is to deploy the air bags.“
– Nick Joy, AutoBang Ltd
AutoBang Ltd has been started by Nick Joy, an expert in air bag electronics, who says his device comes as the Environment Agency is threatening to close vehicle recyclers that do not have a method of deploying air bags.

ELV network providers Autogreen had warned of the difficulties of air bags earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story).

Dangerous
Mr Joy said some of the newest vehicles have up to 18 air bags each. He told letsrecycle.com: “The problem is that the age of ELVs are such that we are entering the airbag era. Some of the airbags contain sodium azide, which is dangerous – one driver's airbag would have enough potentially to kill 35 people. The concern is that shredders could open pandora's box with this.

“The only logical, cost-effective way to deal with this is to deploy the air bags. They can technically be removed and re-used, but people don't like re-using air bags and insurance companies don't like it,” he said.

The AutoBang air bag deployment system is designed to be robust for use in scrapyards

Robust
Mr Joy, who spent seven years as an electronics expert at Autoliv, one of the largest air-bag manufacturers in the UK, explained: “The difficulty has been that air bag deployment equipment previously has been developed for use in the laboratory – vehicle recyclers want equipment that can be used out in the yard, in various weather conditions. They need something robust and self-contained that works in the rain.”

Mr Joy said his AutoBang system connects to any air bag and has a self-contained power supply. Able to deploy multiple air bags simultaneously to save time, it renders hazardous substances stable so that materials can be recovered.

As well as supplying 18 units for Sims Group, Mr Joy is also trialling the system with European Metal Recycling (EMR) and has supplied systems to Norton's.