airbags suck

Are that many people being killed by airbags? I have seen a few "exposes" on those hype of the week newsmagazine shows, but haven't heard much else. What I have seen, over and over, are things in the paper where there are bad accidents that leave one party dead, while the other person, in a more recent, air bag equipped car, walks away.

I may be missing the stats on which you base your opinion, and would appreciate any insight.

I definitely believe the airbags save lives. I'm too large (6'2"

225lbs.) to worry about being killed by one. However, if one is to open during a curb crash or when bumping a car from behind at 25 mph, I'm going to be burned, cut, have my nose broken or have my arm bent out of joint like my brother-in-law did. These are my fears, not the death-by-airbag scenario. I wish they only opened during *serious* accidents where even a buckled occupant may be killed (like offset crashing similar to the Insurance Institute tests). I cringe every time I look at that steering wheel bag and imagine it opening in my face....

TOE

I know two people at work who have had them go off in the last year. Nether was injured, even a little. Both complained about the noise and the smell. While there can be minor injuries, they are not the norm and with the more modern air bags (one of the two had the old style bags) that chance is greatly reduced.

In general, they're set not to open except in head-on crashes of

35 mph or more (i.e. abrupt decelleration). So being bumped from behind shouldn't set it off and neither should small shocks like you hitting a curb. Nor can you stop that quick just by hitting the brakes.

As to the question of whether they suck or not... I believe they work by a chemical reaction that turns a solid into a gas--they blow but they don't suck.

I've also wondered how bad it might be if your hand were in the way of the blast, or if you just happened to be leaning forward at the time of airbag deployment. As a result I try to limit my risk there by doing that as little as possible while on the highway. Even before airbags it wasn't particulary safe or prudent to bend over and pick stuff up or lean into the steering wheel while on the highway.

And for those that are of smaller stature who have legitimate c>I definitely believe the airbags save lives. I'm too large (6'2"

Today's airbags aren't nearly as bad as they were when first implemented, nor are the Euro bags likely to cause injury. The problem with North American bags is that they are mandated to be a primary restraint, despite being advertised as a supplementary restraint.

If the new "smart" technology fails to de-power the bag...

Here are some interesting sites:

(go to page 6)

The original claim by airbag proponents was that over 1,000 people a year would be saved. Not only that, but airbags were touted as being the best protection for unbelted kids.

Based on your numbers, that's a 1 in 26 chance of being killed by a safety device. Keep in mind that those killed numbers were only the people killed by the latest technology bags, so if someone today were killed by a '93 bag, it wouldn't be included in that.

True enough, but they should never have been mandated the way they were due to their hazardous nature. They should also never have been mandated due to their pathetic cost/benefit ratio.

And in the meantime? What about all those full strength airbags out now. Just a "sorry about your luck for having a dangerous safety device"?

Absolutely. And legislators should be required to listen to engineers and be held liable should they force something into legislation before it is ready.

Safety doesn't sell. People choose sunroofs over ABS as the $1,000 option. If safety was what people really wanted, the automakers would be all over those options.

Not at all. What it's saying is that just because someone claims a device is the be all and end all of safety equipment doesn't mean that it is.

That's just not true. People will pick the safer vehicle all else being equal. Obviously that's never the case. But now add in that car companies have so been so good at deceptively marketing SUV's as being safer than cars that people actually believe them.

How is one to make an informed decision when such great amounts of deceptive marketing are being used?

And as for the question of "options"... what percentage of people you know actually has ordered a car in the last 10 yrs? Ordering cars with all/only the options we want is still possible with many car companies but by and large people buy something that's on the lot and "close" to what they want. With many cars you basically have the choice of the stripped down car with none or few options or the fully loaded version.

This is where VW has gotten it wrong in the past. I've seen A3 airbag-equipped cars with simple damage like a mildly bent from bumper from a under-10-mph impact and yet the airbags have gone off.

Tell you what. When the kills (all of them, not just the ones by the latest technology bags) are outnumbered by a couple of hundred to one instead of 25 to one, you might have a point about the safety benefits of airbags.

The airbag and seatbelt combination only increases your safety by about 9% over just wearing a seatbelt. At a cost of about $1,000 (more now due to all the "smart" technology and additional bags) added to the cost of the car, that's a pretty negligible gain.

You're welcome to them if you want, but 9% doesn't translate to "a lot" when you factor in that it could malfunction and kill you. Keep in mind that the older these cars get, the more likely a malfunction is to happen.

The NHTSA has a rule that a cost of $2 billion per life saved is acceptable. Airbags are at about $5 billion. If you want a to mandate a safety item that will significantly reduce the number of collisions, try traction control.

That's because airbags weren't considered to be safe! Or is a safety device that, functioning as designed, can kill you a good thing?

You think that bureaucrats came up with safety innovations?

Mandating traction control may indeed be a good thing. So should I conclude from your posting that your arguement is with airbags, not mandating? I'd be willing to concede (I don't have the knowledge to really argue the case one way or another) that airbags *may* or *may not* be the cost effective way to save lives, ie, that there could be other ways to apply that money to get a higher return of lives saved. However, that doesn't speak to the question of whether the use of mandates is the path to creating safer cars. You say no, I think, but what I've seen so far is simply your contention that airbags are not the best solution or the one you might chose as the best.

That's a good sound bite, but avoids the question. The question is not whether regulating agencies come up with technology and solutions. The question is whether having a regulatory environment that sets standards and sometimes chooses among competing approaches is a reasonable approach to achieving goals. Car manufacturers do not want any type of regulations. They don't want standards for emissions, fuel economy, or safety. But we as a society have something to say about that.

Any mandate should be required to have hard science to back it up, it's as simple as that.

If airbags, functioning as designed, will kill people who are using it properly (belted in and not leaning forward) then it shouldn't be allowed in a car, never mind be mandated to be in every new car.

They are most certainly *not* designed to be as safe as possible. If they were, they would be true supplementary restraint systems, not primary.

No, but the people pushing for it (Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook) both claimed that they were perfectly safe for children. They also claimed airbags would save over a thousand lives a year.

I agree. The saddest thing about this is that they are threatening smaller people to protect those who have *chosen* to not use the most effective safety device in the car. Screw the fancy technology to determine how big or whether or not they're belted, simply de-power the bag so that it is a true supplementary device and let the people choose to protect themselves with seatbelts.

And they kill as well. They only record deaths caused by the latest generation of bags. Get killed by the bag in a 2003 Taurus and it's counted, a '93 Taurus and you're just an automotive fatality.

Traveling by road has never been safer. Looking at raw numbers doesn't tell you anything since it doesn't put into perspective how few that is compared to what it could be.