Least-Safe Cars 2007

You're at the car dealership, excited to seal the deal on your nice new ride. You're assessing your options, and several sound sexy: heated cup holders, GPS navigation system, big alloy wheels.

But in a pinch, they could make a bigger difference than the navigation system, shiny wheels and coffee-warmer combined. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rattled the automotive world on Oct. 5 by announcing that side airbags that protect people's heads are reducing driver deaths in cars struck on the driver's side by an estimated 37%. So are side airbags the seat belts of the 21st century?

Seat belts--also humble and un-sexy--were not required by law a few decades ago, and wearing them was not commonplace. Today, side airbags aren't always standard--and as the safety bar ratchets ever higher, cars without them are lagging in safety ratings.

D'OH!

Define the "safeness" of a car by presence or absence of side airbags.
Viola!
The car is now on the "least safe" list. In the old days this was called circular reasoning.

Theory, but never-to-be-proved: air bags preserve and protect the most inept drivers among us. Seat belts do the same to a certain extent.
I wonder if a study has ever been made as to how many survivors of reckless or incompetent driving survive a crash to kill others in a subsequent crash?

If 2 airbags is not enough, why not 4? If 4 is not enough why not 8? 12?

Doubling or tripling the price of cars is good for all of us.
Right?

IIRC, Mercedes has a car already with something like twelve air bags. There are upper and lower in the front for both sides, upper and lower side air bags in the front, rear air bags and rear side air bags.

As a rescuer, they scare the heck out of me. It's not a big deal, but if they haven't deployed when you get on scene, and they deploy while you're working on a patient, it can be way bad. The idea of a safety device that can decapitate chldren bothers me. I'm also curious if the number of children accidentally left in vehicles is partially due to them having to be in the back seat because of air bags (there's also a possibility that the number has remained constant, but each incident gets significant coverage.)

I also think the number of people getting killed in accidents has been reduced because of better rescue techniques. When I was a kid (before hydraulic rescue tools) a car wrapped around a telephone pole at the end of our street. It took the fire department about three hours to get the victims disentangled, and all they had were the same tools you'd find in a carpenter's or mechanic's tool kit. Today, we can have the doors and roof off, and have the dash rolled for extrication in about fifteen minutes, in most instances, although some horrific wrecks can still take a lot longer.

This is standard junk science. They're pushing side air bags, so any side impact wreck in which the person on the side of the car that got struck wasn't killed was probably attributed to the side air bags. I have serious doubts that it's possible to tell whether the person would have died without side air bags.

I read a report a few years ago (can't remember where) that made the case for air bags actually raising insurance rates.

Seems more people survive because of them but they are often left parapalegics or amputees, substantially raising medical costs with long-term physical therapy, prosthetic devices, and/or permanent disability.

Any thoughts on that?

My guess is that if the insurance rates have gone up, it's probably not for the reason that people are surviving with major injuries, when they would have been killed. There should be an offsetting drop off in people who received permanently disabling injuries without air bags. Basically, I think there would be the same bell curve of injuries, just pushed up the scale by the severity of the accident.

I think the reason insurance rates have gone up is because of the changing overall design philosophy of automakers. Previously, cars were made to withstand as much impact as possible with as little damage as possible. Now, cars are designed to collapse and be destroyed on impact, but providing greater protection to passengers.

Also, anecdotally, I made a vehicle accident where a van swerved to miss another car and head-oned a high curb. It flattened both tires and bent the rims, but other than that, no exterior damage. However, the impact made the air bags deploy. The accident would probably have caused about $800 damage, but the airbags deploying meant another $3000, and the air bag broke the woman's glasses and caused a nose bleed. If she'd been wearing her seat belt with no air bag deployment, I'm sure she would have been fine. We transported her because she'd lost consciousness on the deployment, which meant at least another $2500 for transport and ER visit.

Another factor is that ER visits are much more expensive than they used to be because of the additional tests, etc, and also because your insurance pays for all the uninsured people. Most ambulance services, for example, have between a 30% and 45% reimbursement rate from transports. If patients don't have insurance, they don't pay the bill.

I haven't seen the study you cited, but that's my take on it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.