Posted on 02/27/2012 6:50:44 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Air bags -- driver and front seat passenger air bags -- have been mandatory in cars since the mid-1990s. That means there are now millions of older cars on the road with air bags. These air bags are ticking time bombs, financially speaking (and otherwise; more on that below) because of the ever-less-favorable ratio between the value of the car itself and the cost to repair the car if the air bags go off.
Here's what I mean:
Let's say you own a 2000 model Toyota Corolla. It's still running great and you hope to be able to drive it for at least another five years -- a reasonable expectation given the durability of newer cars. At twelve years old, it still has a lot of useful life left. And because it's paid-off, you have very low fixed costs, transportation-wise.
But, here's the catch.
Your 2000 Corolla is only worth about $3,500 or so, retail. But the cost to replace the air bags, if they go off in an accident, will be in the neighborhood of $1,500-$2,000. Which means, even before you take fixing the actual car into account, the projected repair costs have already come dangerously close to the "50 percent of retail value" threshold -- at which point, most insurance companies will refuse to fix the car. Instead, it will be "totaled" and you will be given a check for the retail value -- usually, a lowball number. Rarely will you receive a check adequate to buy an equivalent vehicle.
........... (A 2002 NHTSA study found that "…nearly all vehicles more than seven years old are scrapped if they are involved in a crash in which their airbag deploys.")
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
That’s what the government wants.
But wait. Who would carry comprehensive insurance on a car that is only worth $3500 dollars anyway?
I drop comprehensive coverage when they are only worth that amount and only carry the required liability.
The cost of the insurance probably arund $500 bucks, plus the deductible probably another $500 bucks have you putting in $1,000 dollars towards fixing a car that’s only worth $2500 dollars now.
It’s a small gamble just to take the comprehensive off the car and trust to luck, plus any car that only costs $2,000 dolars to fix —not counting the air bags —you can beat out the fenders and still drive it —sans air bags.
Interesting.
However, he gets a little irresponsible when he offers the following without any evidence:
“But maybe the bags will just go dark and not work. Corrosion, a disconnected wire — either could result in a fault that results in the bag(s) not going off when they should — totaling you instead of the car. Or maybe the bags will just off for no reason at all (leading to the same result, if it happens while you’re driving down the highway at 70 MPH). Hysterical? Exaggeration? Do transmissions in old cars just fail sometimes? Is it unheard of for a tired, high-miles engine to spit a rod through the oil pan? Other car systems degrade and eventually fail in older cars. And so will air bags.”
Thanks for the advice. Can you "beat out" plastic fenders?
He's the "car guy" so I expect he may have some idea. ??
Eric Peters is an automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities: The Cars You Love to Hate (Motor Books International) and a new book, Road Hogs.
Just get some snips and trim off the offending plastic.;^)
So you buy it back, fix the metal damage and put an aftermarket steering wheel or used parts, if you are foolish enough to want airbags.
I have seen far more people hurt by airbags than I have seen helped by them.
I still remember an elderly woman with the skin peeled off of both arms on the underside after bumping into something enough to detonate the airbag.
The car looked like someone threw a football at one headlight at lightning speed. I think I could have bought all the parts to fix it at the junkyard for less than $100 sans the airbags.
We are talking an industry standard blasting cap setting off a charge that sends the bag out at 200mph. People remember the old Dodge commercial where the bag comes floating out. That was marketing genius designed to sell a dangerous product.
Heck, not in my state (West Virginia). The last couple times I got my car inspected the mechanic would just walk out and slap a sticker on it. A few times before that the mechanic would at least make a vague attempt to look like he was doing something, he would ask me to blow the horn and turn on the blinkers. But I've never had a "real" inspection since I moved here. This is in contrast to when I lived in Virginia, they would put the car up on a rack, take all the tires off and spend a good 15 minutes looking over everything. I was told by a mechanic friend that in West Virgina the state only allows the Mechanic to make five dollars off an inspection, so they are NOT going to take more than a minute or two at most.
LOL!
Aren't fenders (bumpers) required equipment?
I wonder if an EMP could cause air bags to deploy?
I've never had one deploy but I've heard stories. But then you're told, well, that would be better than the alternative. I hate balloons and cringe at the thought of an airbag going off in my face.
Some of the early bags went off from static electricity.
Any blasting cap will go off given the right static charge.
One of the local radio car guys told a story of a guy getting new cars off of the transport and the bags detonating every time he got in a car on one of those cold dry days.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/53317741-79/age-car-sales-average.html.csp
The little Federal Nazi’s are all gonna MANDATE you buy a new Government Motors Volt....
FWIW, I have read articles which claim that air bags are of no additional value if you use seat belts and shoulder harness. There may be some (rare) accidents that are survivable only with air bags, but apparently the presence of airbags seems to have the effect of encouraging more dangerous driving habits. People are great at compensating. Studies have shown that populations of comparable cars with and without airbags had insignificant differences in personal injury and fatal accidents involving their own drivers and passengers, in accidents where seatbelts and shoulder harnesses are used. Airbags do mitigate personal injury for people who do not use seatbelts and shoulder harness.
In other words, they are an expensive way to make us all pay for other people’s negligence.
In addition, for short people (like my wife) who drive with their face close to the steering wheel, there is a real danger of serious injury, including blindness, in what would have otherwise have been minor accidents, when airbags deploy.
Our one size fits all nanny state is dangerous and expensive.
I was in a head on collision and got smacked with the airbag. I never, never want to experience that again. I refuse to get in a vehicle where the airbag has not been
“turned off”.
Has anyone ever heard of an airbag going off because of vehicle aging?
How interesting. =^D
Of course, almost any collision of a 10-year-old car severe enough to deploy the airbags will total it, even without the cost of the airbags.
But there is also the issue of unwarranted airbag deployment, when the collision is trivial or even nonexistant. Even in the absence of a causative collision, the airbag and the resulting collision with fixed or moving objects would often total an older car, and perhaps endanger the life of the driver and others. I wonder if there are any reliable statistics on those.
I don’t want to be alarmist about this last point, because I know from direct technical experience that the makers have gone to great lengths to avoid unwarranted deployments. But given the large numbers of cars on the road, and the gargantuan number of vehicle-miles per year, one still wonders if they don’t happen.
Yeah riiiggghhht! I guess this guy doesn't live out in the country where everybody knows at leason one mechanic who will slap a sticker on anything you can push, pull, or drag into the station.
Yeah riiiggghhht! I guess this guy doesn't live out in the country where everybody knows at least one mechanic who will slap a sticker on anything you can push, pull, or drag into the station.
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