should airbag inflate when seat belt is NOT worn?

In the UK we were told that airbags became necessary because some US citizens refuse to wear a seatbelt. Some macho thing, I suppose. If it was disabled when not wearing a seatbelt or whatever there'd be no point in them.

YES

I remember hearing the same. Also something about US cars having larger airbags, to cater for those who don't or wont use a seat belt. Mike.

They like to blame everything on the US over there. You don't suppose they might have added airbags as a safety measure do you? (since a collision is far more survivable with both airbags and seatbelts than either one alone)

Why do you suppose they came out with those foolish side curtain airbags? Is it because we silly Americans like to hang out our side windows?

Hey, we had a revolution. We won, you lost. Get over it...

The original US spec was to restrain an UNBELTED 160 pound individual. The idea was that we were too stupid to buckle up and therefore needed a passive system with such capability. It's been a contributor to a number of needless deaths ... too much restraint for too small a person too close to the bag.

R / John

Ideally, you should wear your seat belts AND drive a car with airbags. Between the two, seat belts are the more basic and important. In the US, people tend not to wear seat belts and so manufacturers modify the cars for that market (US airbags fire stronger so that they get fully inflated earlier, so as not to push back a person without seat belts: the point is to make people hit the airbag when it's already started deflating). If you don't have an american car and you don't wear seat belts, you are more likely to hit the airbag while it's still inflating thus getting an even stronger blow (the harder the accident, the earlier you hit the airbag). However a hard accident without belts is unlikely to leave you alive, with or without airbags.

I'm not sure. A seatbelt is the best safety item, though. And judging by the TV etc progs we get here they aren't worn universally. In the UK they near enough are.

Probably to protect that coffee you seem to be always drinking while driving? Seems 'we' have you to thank for those stupid cupholders BMW fit while pushing important controls out of reach. ;-)

Depends on what you mean by 'won'. ;-)

Hey Fred

If it wasn't for your SMOG in L.A. we wouldn't have unleaded gas and bloody catalytic converters. I have read in the past and I more certain of it now that nearly all modern high efficiency petrol engines would be OK without the dammed US insisted CATS

Looking at the US Police videos we see here on TV nothing would surprise be what some of you folks do across the pond there.

Doubt it - apparently the last war you fought on home terrotry you lost and you were fighting yourselves - Vietnam -------- Carter ran away and Iraq - well you're still getting blown up.

Can't build cars can't win the war.

That is not true at all. But you are welcome to go back to leaded gas in EU if you want all that lead making your children idiots. Of course, that may be why you're an idiot.

FloydR

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:54:22 -0000, "X." waffled on about something:

I think they should remove the airbags and just let those silly enough not to wear a seatbelt get removed from the gene pool darwin award style!

D0d6y.

Which is fine until you drive a truck on the wrong side of the road I am driving down.

First off let me clear you up. I'm on the right coast, not the left one. We don't have smog in New England, just acid rain.

"OK?" Please define OK as it relates to auto emissions.

Yeah, as compared to some of the great footage we get over here of you folks at the local footy match?

Huh? The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown is pretty well regarded as having sealed the deal. Or do your history books tell you something different?

Sorry, we won again. I'm a Northerner.

Actually Nixon closed out that one. But it wasn't a real war.

Not nearly as fast as they are.

In case you haven't noticed, nobody really wins wars anymore.

Floyd

Didn't make any difference in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England.

85% of the kids are home grown idiots. this is mainly because it being a Navy base and after the war (WW2) many of the men folk never returned and they shifted many of the single mums out to a "new town" not far away.

The sailors came into port and went to find the girls and then the single mums had 2 or 3 kids - no dad. The guy met another girl around the corner on the next visit and she ended up with another kid - same dad.

Eventually over the past 60 years we have brothers marrying sisters and not knowing............. They call it in-breeding and like racehorses they either excel (not often) or fall at the first fence (most often).

Nothing at all to do with lead in petrol - in fact light aircraft still use leaded fuel and so do all those still using petrol piston engines like the racers and antiques........

I suspect they are larger because the weight of the average USA citizen is higher than that of the average UK citizen.

Some people irrationally believe they are safer without seat belts here in the USA. I have never understood how they think...their thought processes are obviously confused.

JRE

That's the biggest load of shit you've ever spit out Dave. If the seatbelts are not used, the airbag is all but worthless, and may actually cause injury of death. That is why the bags are disabled if the belts are not being used.

So it's better for your head to hit the windscreen than an airbag deploy? I think not...

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 18:53:37 +0100, "R. Mark Clayton" waffled on about something:

Somehow I doubt an airbag will make much difference in that case!

Dodgy

Hey, and then you had a civil war which made Iraq, Vietnam, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Rwanda look like amatuers. Well done, you obviously know how to kill people efficiently. (Even if it is yourselves)

PyroJames

The trouble is, if the occupants are not strapped in, it is difficult to predict exactly where they will be when the airbag deploys. In such a case, the airbag could actually make matters worse for any one, or all, of the occupants.