Ford is looking to make safety a bigger standard issue in their cars. Their Transit van is going to be the first with full-length curtain airbags. It has been designed to help provide enhanced head and neck protection in rollover and side-impact crashes.

The airbag is three times larger than the conventional ones, and it works the same as any airbag. It still inflates instantly, and has been engineered to deploy evenly and remain inflated for another few seconds after impact.

The airbag itself measures 15 feet (4.6 m) in length and it was developed in partnership with TRW Automotive, a global supplier of active and passive safety systems.