It is known to provide a motor vehicle with a curtain airbag to protect an occupant of a motor vehicle from contact with a side of the motor vehicle during an accident and to prevent a body part of an occupant from passing through a window aperture during a roll-over event.
It is further known to provide two airbags arranged in a side by side relationship each of the airbags having a straight edge that, when the airbags are deployed, forms a vertical edge that abuts the corresponding vertical edge of the adjacent airbag. The location of the join between the two airbags is normally located in front of a vertical window frame member, such as a B-post or C-post, and the join is often held together by tethers.
In such curtain airbag arrangements it is possible that, when forces are applied to the two airbags by the impact of one or more occupants, the two vertical edges may separate unless there are many tethers holding the two airbags in place, and the tethers hold the two airbags tightly together which is technically difficult to achieve. Any such airbag separation risks exposure of the underlying structural member which is clearly not desirable. It is further possible with such an arrangement that, if the forces applied to one airbag are considerably larger than those applied to the other airbag, the other airbag can be dragged across potentially causing the one airbag to move into an unstable position thereby reducing its effectiveness particularly in respect of extrusion of the airbag through an adjacent window aperture.
The present disclosure seeks to address these issues.