In recent years, airbag devices have become standard equipment for most vehicles. The airbag device is a safety device activated upon an emergency event such as a vehicle collision and inflated and deployed by gas pressure to receive and protect an occupant. There are different kinds of airbag devices for various installation locations or uses. For example, a front airbag is provided in the center of the steering at the driver seat in order to protect the occupant of the front seat against an impact mainly in the front-back direction, and a passenger airbag is provided in the vicinity of a front passenger seat at locations including the instrument panel. In addition, a side curtain airbag that is inflated and deployed along the side windows is provided at the side door area near the roof in order to protect occupants of the front and back seats against a side collision and a subsequent roll over (turn over).
In an occupant protecting device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2014-034356, a side airbag to be inflated and deployed immediately next to an occupant is provided on each side of a seat. According to the above mentioned reference, occupant's movement to the side opposite to the collision side (one side in the vehicle widthwise direction) that may be caused by reaction against movement to the collision side (the other side in the vehicle widthwise direction) in a collision can be restricted.
[PTL 1]
The airbag device described above is adapted to mainly cope with collisions in various directions such as frontal and side collisions, and airbags for a driver's seat and passenger seats are designed individually to cope with a frontal collision. For a side collision, separate airbags are used depending on the body parts to be protected by the airbags, for example the head is protected by a side curtain airbag, and the chest and abdomen are protected by side airbags. These airbags are supported by reaction force surfaces on the vehicle body side such as side surfaces of the vehicle interior and therefore have high occupant restraining capabilities even when the airbags receive the weight of an occupant in restraining the occupant. However, in order to cope with collisions in more varied directions, additional airbags are used. Such additional airbags may not always secure appropriate reaction force surfaces on the vehicle body side depending on where these airbags are installed, additional spaces for these airbags are not always easily available, and the vehicle weight and device cost might increase as a result.
In view of the problem, it is an object of the present invention to provide an occupant restraining device capable of coping with a plurality of collision directions without additional airbags.