GM unveils rollover facility

MILFORD, Mich. — General Motors Corp. unveiled a new $10 million crash test facility on Tuesday that will help the automaker study rollover crashes.

The Detroit-based company also said that by 2012 it will make rollover-enabled air bags a standard feature on all of its retail vehicles. The air bags currently are used on 43 percent of GM’s trucks.

GM said it planned to perform 150 rollover tests next year at its Milford Proving Grounds in suburban Detroit to help it better understand rollover crashes, which in 2005 accounted for about 4 percent of all crashes but 33 percent of those occupants of passenger vehicles killed on the nation’s highways.

Engineers demonstrated a rollover test during the facility’s unveiling, which was attended by Nicole Nason, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A red Buick Rainier approached a single-track ramp at more than 40 miles an hour, went airborne, landed on its side and slid into a large net anchored by retractable tension cables.

GM officials hope to find ways to keep people from being ejected in rollovers and develop sensors for rollover-enabled air bags, which can help reduce injuries and prevent ejections.

Rollover-enabled air bags stay open for five seconds compared with the basic head curtain air bag, which offers protection for about three-tenths of a second.

Bob Lange, the automaker’s executive director for safety, said electronic stability control and rollover air bags will increase the cost of GM vehicles, but: “We think the value of providing this increased level of safety is well worth the added product cost.”

GM plans to install electronic stability control on all of its vehicles by the end of 2010.