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 ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bBVJAFrN0U
“There’s a video on the web of an old woman shuffling across a street.”
Thanks!
:)
Mississippi is only $5. Alabama doesn't even have state inspection stickers.
LOL. I just purged my garage and got rid of a timing light, dwell/tach meter, and feeler gauges. You could fix the old ones and good thing to because they needed a lot of maintenance and repair.
With the advent of commie care its going to get much worse since every personal decision regarding safety or even lifestyle will have an impact on how much healthcare society will spend on someone. No telling how much freedom we will give up in order to cut healthcare costs.
And he couldn't ask 1 of 3 who did not have air bags. But 100% of the spokespersons for their estates recommended getting air bags. ;-)
I had a 1996 Geo Metro that I hit a deer with. The airbag deployed I did not have comprehensive so I fixed it myself and drove it for 2 more years. I didn’t need air bags in the 40s, 50s, 60s 70s, 80 so I don’t need them now. Wisconsin doesn’t have those stupid vehicle inspection laws Everyone should experience an air bag deployment It is not fun.
I had a 1996 Geo Metro that I hit a deer with. The airbag deployed I did not have comprehensive so I fixed it myself and drove it for 2 more years. I didn’t need air bags in the 40s, 50s, 60s 70s, 80 so I don’t need them now. Wisconsin doesn’t have those stupid vehicle inspection laws Everyone should experience an air bag deployment It is not fun.
In 2002 i was my brother’s 99 taurus, in a parking lot and another car pulled out of their spot without looking in front of us. My brother hit them at about 10 mph or so in right rear quarter. For some reason, the airbags deployed, and i wear glasses. The force of the airbag, knocked my glasses off my face into the back seat, and the edge of the left lens cut my face from my upper cheek to above my eyebrow, including my eyelid, but thankfully not my eyeball.
If people want them, thats fine, but i don’t and they definitely should not be mandated by the federal govt.
In Arkansas there is not inspection. That was dropped during Huckabee’s term. Best thing .gov ever did. Also can just get your tags over the internet now. Much faster and cheaper.
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Don't air bags have an interlock circuit with a startup test-cycle now, to prevent disconnection of a driver's airbag, or driving with a deployed (unreplaced) bag?
I wonder if anyone has ever looked seriously at one alternative popular with NASCAR for 20-30 years, the four-point harness. They used those for eons without airbags before they went to crash webbing.
<OT>I still can't figure out what killed Dale Earnhardt Sr., really. One can be told, but it still sounds wildly unlikely. </OT>
It isn't the accidental deployment so much as the unnecessary one. I hit a deer with a one-ton van. The little nipper left a fine print of his front quarter on one side of the license plate, the rear on the other, rolled up through the plastic grille, bent the radiator and Air conditioning condenser and popped the airbags.
In the meantime, I was still doing 65 on a narrow two lane with opposing heavy truck traffic, with deer gore coating the windshield, a cabin full of funk from the airbags, and the danged bag in the way of trying to steer. (the bag and I never made contact when it deployed).
Cost to repair the vehicle (Parts and labor) about $1000 without the airbags, triple that with them.
The steering wheel is gorilla taped over, the radiator has been replaced, and I'll wait until spring for the A/C and the front end plastic. Whether or not I choose to have the airbags done, I am going to get one of those 'cowcatcher' brushgrilles and bumpers and put it on the front, just to keep from having to deal with a disabled vehicle at 3AM again.
It does happen. A friend had his deploy as he went around a corner on the way to his parents house. BAM! He almost hit a parked car, but luckily wasn’t going very fast. Oddly enough, it had already happened once before in the same car. A family member was able to fix it cheaply the first time.
Gave him a mild concussion and some flash burns. The car was a mid 90s Olds, forget the make, but it was a 4 door luxury model.
Not quite. Ford fought airbags like hell, proposed and installed "automatic" seatbelts as an alternative, and lobbied furiously -- and lost, to a Dim Administration grimly determined to decide All Aspects of Everything.
In 1999 I tapped a woman's rear bumper on a freeway onramp (we were accelerating to highway speed, and she nailed the brakes). Damage to my mid-80's GM Impala, about $400 for headlight housing, grille, and trim piece around the grille. No damage to the chrome-plated steel bumper. Her estimate on her nearly-new Nissan with waffle-cookie plastic bumper with a barely-visible nick in it? $1600 by my insurance company. Those fancy body-colored bumpers are just too expensive to repair.
Watch out for those butt warmers, esp. when someone's sport-drink bottle with its little fruity-poo suck-nipple dribbles contents into the seat. Road & Track found that that costs about $1100 in a mid-range Lexus.
I always try to teach my kids to never take their eyes off the car in front of them on those on-ramps until they are long gone.
There is always some no driving SOB who loses their nerve and jam their brakes on.
“There’s a video on the web of an old woman shuffling across a street. A car waiting to make a right turn honks the horn to encourage her to pick up the pace. She swings her purse at the car and hits the bumper. That sets off the air bag in the driver’s face. Likely a $1500 cost to replace. I still wonder how the guy handled it. It was essentially vandalism with a very high financial impact on him. “
I know the one you are referring to. It was a stunt. Airbags do not deploy and stay deployed. They DEflate nearly as fast as they INflate. You won’t ever see them “blown up” like a big bag of air.
Nor will you set off an airbag on a stopped car by hitting it with a bag, or kicking the front of it.
My insurance company sent me some propaganda in about 1988 about Insurance Information Institute or IIHS data on different car models w/r/t injury experiences w/ most of the popular models. Vehicle weight played a role in mitigating the severity of the DV of your vehicle in a crash. Classic case-in-point: two women friends beetling along a 2-lane commuter road in Atlanta T-boned a late-turning '73 Ford LTD (the big one) in their Dodge Colt. Advantage the Ford, they were a mess for a year of tough rehab.
The second consideration was basically elbow-room in your car: how much room your body has to move before encountering something unyielding, like the lower part of the dash, windshield, etc. Therefore, even roomy sport convertibles like the Mercedes 450/380 SL and Corvette had much lower injury experiences than usual, but the very cozy Nissan Pulsar was a nasty place to be in a major crash.
Of course, the Chevy/GMC Suburban was a fortress of safety; but the Corvette was surprisingly close.
This was something morally-smug U.S. officialdom gave short shrift to when, under the execrable Joan Claybrook (she of the idiotic egg-shaped "safety car"), Carter DoT continued to use CAFE mileage in a game to force US manufacturers to produce small, lightweight cars. Wonder if anyone is ever going to do a "Carter-Claybrook Body Count"?
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