my only concern was stopping slow enough to not get rear-ended
That is a concern. My way of dealing with that is to try to stay in the slower lanes as much as possible. I’m not a naturally slow driver, and have to watch my speed, which means I do a lot of careful and prudent lane changing to pass on the left and then move back over to the right. I don’t tail-gate and for the most part don’t get tail-gated.
No system is perfect, however, and there are going to be accidents, which brings me to my second pet peeve:
WTF with the airbags???
If we all wear seatbelts, why do we need to ride around with explosive devices installed in front of our faces???
It’s not just what happened to this poor girl (and my heart goes out to her)... even properly belted and seated passengers (like a friend of mine) can be permanently injured (hearing) in a low-impact crash by those stupid f-ing airbags.
Once again we are all victims of the Liberal Nanny State and no one is even talking about this.
Regarding “WTF with the airbags?”, I owe them my life. I was involved in a head-on crash at about 45 MPH. Seeing the car the next day, I have little doubt I would be dead if it wasn’t for the seat belt/airbag combo. I’ve always worn my seat belt (thanks to a great driver ed teacher in HS), but I am the poster boy for airbags nowadays. The more, the better!
You’ve exposed what I see as the real story here. I am constantly telling people that their air bag approaches their face at 200 mph.
I was going to say the real clulprit in this crash was the airbag - until I saw the damage to the car.