Minority view: I dislike airbags. If it were legal - which it is not where I live - I would have them out of my car today.
The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head.
The main problem with American air bags are that they have to (by law passed in 1984) be designed to work with people not wearing seat belts (unlike Europe)[1]. This means they more dangerous than European ones because they are bigger and must deploy much more explosively. This law is unlikely to be changed for many reasons with the most important one likely being that some car companies like expensive, unique requirements that segment markets and produce barriers to competition.
The airbag significantly reduced the distance between your face and anything else. In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.
I'd rather have a sore neck from driving into a wall at 35mph than have a concussion from bouncing my face off of a bag full of high pressure gas.
Side curtain airbags are a much more useful technology than frontal ones.
Edit: Fire needs three things, fuel, oxygen and ignition. The atmosphere has oxygen. A gasoline vehicle keeps the fuel and ignition relatively far from each other. A battery contains both fuel and a source of ignition in close proximity. A punctured gas tank will not cause a fire every time. A punctured battery pack will cause a fire basically every time. In many cases a rusted out or leaking fuel system is noticed well before it starts a fire. There isn't much opportunity to notice a high-amperage short before it's a problem. Putting out a fire is even harder on electric vehicles. You can't throw foam and water on an internal short. There are many advantages of electric vehicles. Fire safety is not one of them.
"In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well."
That's not really a good thing. Having something to catch your head helps prevent neck injuries. In a high-speed crash, the forces involved could actually be debilitating and/or life-threatening.
Unless it's a Takata airbag and the thing that catches your face is a piece of metal shrapnel.
You do understand that airbags are bombs. The inflation mechanism literally uses explosives. They can and have killed people especially children and the elderly. Early generation airbags are more violent and dangerous because the standard was to protect an unbelted driver.
Is a few lives saved in (rare) high speed accidents worth setting off explosions in people's faces and turning an otherwise minor accident into a trip to the hospital?
If all you care about are deaths per distance then you probably want the former. If you care about minimizing accidents that require any medical care reducing the number of small explosions near people's faces is the better bet. Someone else posted the a NYT link that's relevant.
This is for driver's frontal airbags only. Passenger airbags and side curtain airbags are less bad because people usually sit farther from the passenger airbag and there is less support in side impacts.
> In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.
Great, then there's nothing to worry about... but if it is a serious crash, you'll wish you had an airbag to bounce off of rather than a hard steering column, dashboard and windshield.
Most people will never be in an airbag deploying crash in their lives. Of the minority that will very few will be in the kind of crash where a (frontal) airbag is what prevents them from serious harm.
If OEMs would just be less trigger happy with frontal airbag deployment then I'd be satisfied but the problem with that is that then you get the Concerned Mothers Association(TM) complaining about OEMs not doing everything they can to "save lives" and publicizing a few edge cases.
When I slammed into an oncoming left turning car at 50mph I was not wearing a seatbelt, my Subaru rolled completely over and the front airbag deployed. I left the accident with minor lacerations and no broken bones or major bruising. In 20 years of driving airbag equipped cars this has been my only experience of an airbag deployment. So far I'm a happy customer.
Turning an accident that would have left one only bruised from the seatbelt into one that also includes a broken nose and injuries to one's hands and arms is fairly common.
I have been in an accident with no air bag deployed and wearing my seat belt. I was rear-ended by a vehicle doing 45 mph faster than mine. I had torn ligaments in my neck that took years to fully recover from.
An air bag might have reduced my injury to a sore neck.
P.S. I was in a 1964 Chevrolet C10 Pickup that I had installed seat belts in.
My forehead and shoulders bounced off the steering wheel so hard that the left lens of my eyeglasses popped out. My mother, who was with me, didn't have her seat belt on. She was bounced so hard against the ceiling she was knocked unconscious.
My family had a car that was once very lightly rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. No major marks or scuffing on the back bumper so my mom just drove away. Three months later, while driving on the highway, she drove into a pot hole that triggered the airbags. The airbags exploded (yes they explode) completely unexpectedly while driving at 70 mph. Thankfully she was not hurt but the experience definitely shook her. Apparently the airbags' trigger had been triggered halfway when the car had been rear-ended.
I just have to ask, how do you know that the two incidents are related? The airbags may have deployed when she hit that pothole regardless of the rear-ender. Especially considering that a rear-ender would not trigger an airbag deployment, because that force is in the opposite direction of what an airbag is designed to protect you from.
Is there any way this can be checked as a part of routine maintenance at a mechanic? It sounds like it should be a standard part of the various state inspections.
Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.
>Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.
have no idea why are you saying that. Probably you just _think_ so, and you've probably never been in a "relatively minor" accident, let alone in the accident where the car flies off the road and violently turns in every possible direction while flying and skidding upon landing. I was. Thanks God and Federal regulation authority for the seat belts mandate. Fixed by the seat belts it was like the scariest, very high-G, twists and turns, amusement park ride. Without the seat belts even the survival in that situation would hardly be possible, let alone avoiding heavy traumas and disability. The airbags didn't deploy for whatever reason.
I drove cars without airbags for most of my life. I even still have a car without airbags. Whether it's a good idea or not is debatable, but your statement that it's dangerous doesn't resonate with me. Airbags are a false sense of security and may or may not help you and were originally devised as a way to help drivers who don't use their seat belts. Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up, however. In the past, airbags have injured drivers and can go off unexpectedly (and even killed people when doing so).
survivorship bias. Yes, airbags can have faults that can cause injury. But having them is still safer than not having them. Just because you survived in a car without airbags and some other individual (even many) got injured or killed by an airbag is not evidence that people in general are safer without airbags. You need to assess risk/benefit based on a statistically valid sample size.
That's not to say we shouldn't work on safer airbags, especially for children, or hold manufacturers accountable for faults/failures; of course we should. But saying cars are somehow safer without airbags flies in the face of the available evidence.
[edit] I realize you didn't explicitly say that airbags are not safe ('good idea or not is debatable', 'may or may not'), but you strongly imply that with 'Airbags are a false sense of security'.
"To get the rule, which was opposed by the auto industry because it would add cost to vehicles, Dole promised it would be rescinded if states that accounted for two-thirds of the population passed laws requiring seat belt use."
First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to think we are at 2/3 of the population.
The claim as phrased is somewhat suspicious, since it's a regulatory rule and the industry had no firm ability to prevent the department from issuing the regulation (they could lobby against it, or try to get allies in Congress to exercise a legislative veto.) Such a promise may have been a political effort to soften the blow, but I don't see any argument that, even if she was morally obligated to follow through on the promise while she was Secretary, it would be even morally binding on a later Secretary, especially in a different administration. And, legally, if the condition isn't in the regulation or somewhere else legally binding, a politicians promise of repeal is meaningless.
> Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up
That's not the case (emphasis on the "way up" part). The average new car price is over $33,000 in the US. Airbags, including side curtains, are a trivial portion of that cost. Even if you averaged it all out by including all airbag deployments and the cost to replace them, you're talking about a net 1%-2% of the cost of a new vehicle's purchase price (much less if we were to count the total expenditures across the lifetime of the vehicle, including fuel and routine maintenance).
"NHTSA estimates that when side curtain airbags become standard to meet the new side impact regulations in 2013, the airbags will add about $33 to the overall cost of the vehicle. Side curtains are slightly more expensive from OEM suppliers than traditional chest airbags (which cost about $50 apiece, on average) [source: Automotive News]"
The need for the side columns to have a degree of strength is a bigger problem for visibility that the bulk added by side curtains.
Driving '60 and 70's cars was great for visibility due to the amount of glass and narrow pillars. The risk of dying in a relatively low speed accident was less ideal.
My girlfriend's 2006? Subaru Legacy had thinner columns than her 2013 model. Not sure by how much, but it was very noticeable at first and I still find I sometimes miss seeing things in the new car that I never had a problem with in the old one. Maybe they are wider now for strength and side air bags. In any case, maximizing cars for crash-test-dummy preservation may not minimize for human harm due to car accidents. With automatic cars this may be not be a very big problem, but they are still a ways off, I think.
Well, when back over accidents became more common because the safety arms race gave vehicles rear visibility only slightly better than a Panzer the government mandated backup cameras.
Self driving cars will probably take over before "front blind spot detection" becomes a thing.
People drove around in cars with no seat belts, solid dashboards, craptastic drum brakes, and other great features along those lines, and most of them survived. The cars were still outrageously dangerous.
Deaths per passenger-mile in the 1960s were about 5x greater than they are today. Traffic fatalities made up about 2.5% of all deaths at the time, even though people drove far less than they do now. I'm quite happy to call that "outrageous."
I assume you're trying to call attention to confounding factors like improved medical care. That's really tough to answer, because 60-year-old cars today aren't driven the way they were when they were new, and they're benefitting from modern tires and brake materials.
I'm sure there are analyses out there of the probability of serious injury or death in various crash scenarios in various types of cars.
Are those numbers adjusted for alcohol consumption and how difficult it is for young people to get their licenses? T
There's a reason your age is the biggest factor in your car insurance premium.
Making it statistically less likely for a car full of drunk teenagers to go off a cliff on their way to prom affects road fatality statistics the same way decreases in infant mortality increases life expectancy.
The primary reduction in traffic fatalities is due to keeping "undesirable people" off the roads, increases in vehicle performance (modern cars can stop on and turn a relative dime compared to cars from decades ago)that turn many accidents into close calls.
Chasing safety is a lot like fuel economy. It's a steady march of small improvements all of which are compromises. I and many other people don't want to be injured in a likely accident scenario for a small reduction in the likelihood of death in an unlikely accident scenario. I also don't want the spare tire of my SUV under the trunk floor where I can't access it without removing cargo just to get .01 extra mpg.
Seatbelt with no airbag is still better than no seatbelt.
Also, I think the shoulder belt brake tends to work better than you imply (I had a big scratch when I collided with someone that crossed the centerline, I didn't hit my face on anything, despite the lack of airbags).
You've got it backwards. "Without a belt, air bags are of slight benefit".[0] Airbags are chiefly a nanny measure to protect people too stupid to fasten a seatbelt.
What are you talking about? That article clearly says that air bags without seat belts are "of slight benefit", but are very effective when combined with seat belts.
I agree. They also are the reason most cars now involved in an collision where one goes off are totaled. We're a lot safer, with respect to potential fatality level crashes, but minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.
> minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.
It's worth noting that a lot of this is due to massively improved crumple zone technology - older cars have smaller and sturdier crumple zones, meaning the cars drive away from accidents more intact (although the human being inside might be pretty messed up). New cars take much more damage in relatively small accidents to disperse as much energy as possible. Bad for resale value, but good for human survival.
It's not really the amount of energy dispersed, it's the time it takes it to happen.
It's usually the kinetic energy of the body that needs to be dissipated, modestly increasing the time it takes that to happen dramatically decreases the forces involved.
"Totaled" is just a term of art in the insurance industry. It means that the cost to restore the vehicle is greater than its as-repaired street value. It doesn't mean that the vehicle has to be destroyed; it just means the insurer will only give you the fair market value of the vehicle as though you sold it used immediately before the accident, instead of paying for it to be repaired.
The problem, though, is that when an insurance company does that, it colors the title of the vehicle (e.g. "salvage title"), which makes it harder to sell and reduces its resale value.
They in turn sell it, where one of two things happens.
* It is parted out for spares for other cars.
* Someone actually repairs and resells it. This is one of the things you have to look out for when buying a used car. It may not be difficult to repair it cosmetically, but crumple zones are one use only.
Two deployed airbags in a moderate (but not life threatening) crash likely cost $1000 each to replace, in addition to whatever other damage has been done to the vehicle.
First, actually adding airbags does not add thousands of dollars to the cost of a car. Hundreds, maybe.
Second, I will gladly pay extra for such a highly effective safety feature.
Third, I'm quite certain the medical costs saved by airbags every year will more than offset the cost of installing them on every new car. And that's just cold calculation, without bringing the moral value into it.
Actually, I said security, not safety. They are not quite the same. But yes, I certainly do not always discount emotive decisions. None of us do.
I always drive with a certain slight feeling of unease because of that explosively triggerable thing in front of me. I'd rather not. In no way do I wish to stop anybody else from having these devices in their vehicles - I just wish I weren't forced into having them myself.
For the record, I don't like the forced use of seatbelts either, even though personally, I wouldn't dream of ever driving one meter without them.
What's the difference between security and safety here? I assumed that was a typo/thinko because "security" in the context of cars would mean, to me, things like alarms and other anti-theft devices.
I just can't understand preferring an actual increased risk of death to a known-irrational feeling of unease.
And do any of those studies contradict what I wrote? I reckon not, though I'd be happy to stand corrected and be reassured that the airbag sitting in front of me when I'm driving will always be perfectly safe to use/deploy.
An airbag is a supplementary restraint system. It does not replace or take precedence over the primary restraint system (a.k.a. the seat belt). That's what I meant when I reckoned it to be less critical; the airbag does you little good (and in fact is a heck of a lot more dangerous) if you're not wearing a seat belt.
Now, if this truck didn't even have seatbelts, then I'd be a lot more worried.
That's why airbag control systems are programmed to only activate in crash scenarios where they do more good than harm. It's not as if all 10 airbags will instantly inflate in every possible crash.
The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head.
[Edit: typo]