WASHINGTON — One patrol officer had his nose broken by a laptop computer. Another was smacked with the butt of his shotgun and knocked unconscious. A third got poked in the eye by wires from his radar unit and lost part of his vision.
The culprit in each case was not a raging assailant, but the passenger-side air bag in the cops' squad cars. When an air bag deploys in a crash, it can turn equipment unwittingly mounted in its path into a high-energy missile, safety experts say.
Laptop computers, cell phones, radar units and other technological accessories of the modern police cruiser have become hazards for officers in crashes, according to federal and independent investigators. Police officers may soon join children, small women and the elderly on the list of those at risk of airbag injuries.
"It's an issue that needs to be brought to the attention of the law enforcement community," said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is issuing a safety alert this week. "As time goes on, they are adding more and more equipment to these patrol cars.
"We want to make sure they don't mistakenly install something in the direct path of an air bag."
The precise number of officers injured in such accidents is unknown, but Dave Long, an air-bag safety consultant for North Memorial Medical Center near Minneapolis, said he has collected information on at least 20 cases. NHTSA has investigated one crash, involving a Louisiana police officer hurt by a flying laptop computer when his patrol car hit the back of a transit bus last summer, Tyson said.
"Most cops are not willing to give out information about this," said Long. "It's not something you're really proud of. They don't want to say they busted a $2,000 computer, got an officer hurt and stuff was whooshing through the air."
The California Highway Patrol, which has a fleet of about 2,500 cruisers, became aware of the problem several years ago through its own testing, said Capt. B.J. Hall, commander of the motor transport section. The tests involved setting off the passenger-side air bag and recording the results.
"We did a video, and the first time we tried it, we found we would have knocked some equipment into the driver," said Hall. "We make sure we don't mount anything in the deployment zone."
Many smaller departments do not have budgets for testing or for complicated installation of equipment. Some have used bungee cords to strap gear down on top of the dash.
