Do You Have A Glove Box?

If it's clearly such common sense where do you have the problem with the gov't making the dimwits behave in an intelligent manner ?

Maybe ppl should be 'free' to drive a car too without proving some level of competence by passing a test by your thinking ?

Graham

I don't think so.

European airbags are marked SRS - typically on the fascia - whatever - that houses them ( Supplementary Restraint Sytem ) . It's assumed that ppl will be wearing seatbelts - so the action of the airbag is ' supplementary ' to the already excellent effect of the seatbelt.

Graham

They are. They don't maim / kill ppl.

Land of the free ( to not wear seatbelts ) ! Wonderful !

Graham

Based on?

As they are here. Same marking, same naming, same information given to the people who own the car.

As they are here in the USA, yes. It has been made clear to people who bother to care that they won't help you much if at all, if you aren't where you're expected to be when they go off.

I must have been misinformed in that case.

It was my understanding ( certainly when airbags were first considered in the USA ) that they were intended as a primary safety measure and were consequently larger than European versions.

Graham

This thread is way old, but just as an FYI... airbags are all marked SRS in the United States too.

-Fred W

Yup.

USA ) that they

European versions.

I don't know if they're a different part (someone with a parts manual could settle that), but they most definately never have been promoted as a primary safety device here in the USA. That's not to say ignorant people who didn't wear their seatbelts before airbags aren't also ignorantly not wearing their seatbelts now, but that's a Darwinism situation more than anything else.

Dave Hinz

I have a problem with the government making people protect themselves. I believe it should be the individual's responsibility to keep themselves safe and the governments responsibility to make sure people have the resources to do so.

Traffic laws and driving tests exist to protect me and you from other drivers. Someone not wearing a seatbelt doesn't affect my safety at all.

Yes, to a point. However, let's say you get in a car crash, and you aren't wearing a seatbelt. It's 2:00 AM. My pager goes off, and we roll say 3 firetrucks and the ambulance. Let's say 12-15 guys, tied up for 2 hours on a fast call, 3 hours on a bad one. Even in an area with volunteer fire and EMS, that's not a cheap call, and it's paid for by the taxpayers. If you had your seatbelt on, it would have been a towtruck call and I could have stayed sleeping.

OK, so we get there. No seatbelt, and you've been bounced around inside (and sometimes outside) of the car. Your cervical spine is broken. You can't keep a job, so your bills become the state's bills. More expense for the rest of us, based on your decision not to wear a seat belt.

Not true. A reasonable scenario could be constructed where the lack of their seatbelts caused a further accident. And it certainly can, and does, effect your pocketbook.

Far as I'm concerned, it's unfortunate that the cops in this state aren't allowed to pull people over for driving without seat belts. The law is in place, but there has to be _another_ moving violation to tack that on to. After a decade or so, scraping the idiots off the road gets pretty old.

Well put.

It's interesting that the States can make seatbelt use mandatory but are forbidden to enforce the law. Yet the FAA can require their use in aircraft and nobody says a thing.

As an aircraft pilot, I feel naked if I don't have the belt(s) in place.