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 ...
This could well be the case. I watch people drive like they've had their "fear gene" removed -- right on someone's bumper going 50-70 MPH -- plain insane.
I thought that this thread was about mother-in-laws.
Especially if you’re a pipe smoker.
The guy that used to do my paint and body work started asking everyone who walked through the door if they had been hurt when the airbag detonated. He said it was 1 in 3.
Planned Obsolescence
People once understood this was a common business startegy.
Now it is also a common result of the federal government’s narrow minded Nanny State intrusion into every aspect of our economy and our lives.
It's your seatbelt and the body of the car that protect you in an accident.
IMHO, air bags? Not so much. Maybe in high speed or head-on collisions. And if you're a small person, (or pregnant, or are in other situations that I can't think of right this second) they can do more far more harm than good.
Mrs WBill was pretty frosted with me when she was 8+ months VERY pregnant and I worked pretty hard not to let her drive anywhere. But I figured that all she'd need was some idiot to tap her car from behind and blow the air bags. We'd be in a world of trouble. (My car is old enough to not have passenger side air bags.....)
I think that some sort of "off switch" would be ideal. Or a choice. Or something. But Gov't regulators ALWAYS know best. /sarc
The part I’m mainly concerned about is them deploying accidentally. I did a Google search. Though the article brings it up as a possibility, according to what I’m reading at other sources, the risk is, essentially, zero. I’m significantly more likely to die slipping in the tub.
And I don’t worry my pretty little head over that either.
Interestingly, my wife was broadsided by a large buck a few months ago while driving our 2001 Chrysler 300m. Wiped out the side of the car, but no airbags deployed. And now that we have only basic coverage, if they ever deployed, but the car was drivable, we’d just remove them, and use our seat belts for the remainder of the car’s life.
The only reason we have the dashboard bombs is because industry has learned how to buy lawmakers/laws to force consumers to purchase their products.
This happened to me. Hit a deer — minimal damage except it popped the airbag. Insurance “totaled” the vehicle, and cut me a check. I had two options: surrender the vehicle and get the full “totaled” value, or keep the vehicle and take a lower payout. I kept the vehicle.
The payment was (IMO) quite reasonable, considering the age of the vehicle. My insurer will still let me insure for liability, but unless I fix the airbag they won’t let me carry comprehensive. No big deal, that.
In TX you don’t need working airbags to pass inspection. You *do* need a horn, and when the airbag popped it also ruined the horn. So I’ll just install a junkyard horn and a button on the dash. Haven’t gotten around to it yet though.
Here is another kicker: when the airbag pops, the manufacturer may recommend replacing the seatbelts too. The adjuster is required to pay attention to these manufacturer recommendations when totaling up the damages. If the airbag doesn’t add up to enough to “total” the vehicle, toss in a couple $700 seat belt replacements and that probably will do it.
Tell you what, that airbag popping is no fun for the driver. Like getting shot in the face with a shotgun, minus the shot of course. :-)
I have a 99 saturn driven by a teenager that has dents on three out of four quarter panels. So yes.
I say airbags should be optional not mandatory as well as all other government mandated safety equipment. That said if I am in a collision hard enough to deploy the airbags then I really wont care about the reduced value of my car.
With all due deference to the other posters I think airbags are a good thing and I make sure my cars have lots of them. Just like seat belt or helmet use its hard to argue with physics and odds are your odds are better when you are restrained and contained inside a car designed to absorb kinetic energy rather than you absorbing it. Safety measures are not fail proof and at some point the physics will win no matter what. Ask Sonny Bono.
i’d be far more concerned about the effects of climate, corrosion, etc. on the sensors, pressure tanks, etc. bet when the fleet gets old enough you’re gonna see a raft of accidents caused by random deployment of these things whilst the car is simply being driven down tha road.
Different people act differently. Some people will act more recklessly knowing that they have airbags, some will be unaffected. For every rare incident where airbags actually mitigate injury, there is another accident caused by the presence of airbags.
There is a term called “radar-induced accident”, to describe nautical accidents caused by improper reliance on radar for navigation. (The sinking of Andrea Doria was one of the first such instances.) Nowadays, we also have GPS induced accidents. If it were not for the modern automated bridge, the Exxon Valdez would never have run onto the rocks of Prince William Sound.
What is really tragic is the number of people who are ejected in roll overs who likely would have only incurred minor injuries if they had been wearing seatbelts. At lot of these people may have been depending on airbags, which are almost useless in a roll over event.
People’s mental image of a crash are skidding into another vehicle, followed by a crunch and swapping papers. A lot of high speed accidents, the most dangerous kind, involve one or more vehicle rolling over, often several times, with doors coming open and unrestrained passengers flying out. (Of course, being ejected can save your life and political career. If Mary Jo had been ejected from the Oldsmobile, Ted would have become President in 1972.)
We renewed our comprehensive. It's just too cheap, considering the risk around here. It would have totaled the car and given us a minimum of $4,000 to use to get a 4wd truck, which much more fits our lifestyle in the country vs our old life in Seattle. Bummer. Now it's my daily 97 mile commute car. I'm driving it into the ground...
Airbags cost $1,800,000 per life saved.
SAMPLE SELECTION IN THE ESTIMATION OF AIR BAG AND SEAT BELT EFFECTIVENESS*
Buick or buck?
Plastic usually shatters and leaves you nothing to beat out.
It is most of the time swept up and discarded by the tow truck operator. What you can do is go to the Junkyard and buy a new piece and bolt it on yourself. You can do the same for that bumper that is totally useless today.Why bother with paint on a beater. Take whatever color the junk yard has in stock.
I thought at one time there was a law that bumpers had to be able to withstand a hit of 5 MPH, I don’t know what happened to that ruling, but todays plastic bumpers backed with styrofoam will not withstand anything without damage.
—Airbags do mitigate personal injury for people who do not use seatbelts and shoulder harness.—
This as well as the “close to the steering wheel” comment bring up two things I think about: When I’m not wearing a belt, I figure the airbag will mitigate nicely. When I am wearing a belt, I consider the airbag to be an irrelevance.
And, finally, we drive with our 19 lb Maltipoo on our lap. Wonder what would happen...
I hadn't gotten this far.... It was a deer.
—In addition, for short people (like my wife) who drive with their face close to the steering wheel...—
I understand that the air bag deploys at such a force that it impacts you at 200 mph.
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