"Killer" Air Bags?

[Kelleytoons]

In other "still more reasons to worry and not enjoy life" news, those of us living in Florida have particular concerns about this article:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/business/it-looked-like-a-stabbing-but-takata-air-bag-was-the-killer.html

 

While the cars in question were Honda the body of the article does state that even Ford may be affected by this.  This is like a really awful Good news-Bad news joke.  "The good news is that your air bag went off and prevented you from dying in the crash.  The bad news is that it went off and then killed you."

[jomebrew]

Some C-Max hybrids are in the September 26th recall.   Since the dealer has my car right now, I am calling to ask or them to check.  

[kostby]

The problem is (still) with Japanese Takata airbag inflators, used by many manufacturers.

Low bidder, and all that. The new thing reported is the additional warnings for those living in areas with high humidity and high temperatures.

 

Perspective:

50 years ago, hard car impacts into solid objects like trees and bridge abutments, and head-on collisions were nearly always fatal for both driver and front seat passengers.

 

I still remember reading a version of this "Seven-tenths-of-a-second" when I was in drivers' ed in high-school:

 

Seven-Tenths of a Second

Look at your watch and see how long one second really is.  If you have a stop watch, try to stop the stop watch at seven-tenths of a second.  Now that you know how long that is, consider what happens in the first seven-tenths of a second when an automobile traveling 55mph hits a solid object and the driver is not wearing his/hers seat belt and shoulder belt.

In the first tenth of a second, the front bumper and grille collapse.

In the second tenth of a second, the hood crumples, raises and strikes the windshield while the rear wheels are lofted from the ground, still spinning at 55 mph.  Simultaneously, the fenders begin wrapping themselves around the object that was just struck by the car.  The frame of the car has stopped moving, but the rest of the car is still traveling 55 mph.  The driver instinctively stiffens his legs against the crash and they snap at the knee joint. 

During the third tenth of a second, the steering wheel starts to disintegrate in the driver's hands and the steering column is aimed at the driver's chest. 

The forth tenth of a second finds the first two feet of the car's front end wrecked, the rear moving at 35 mph, but the driver's body still traveling at 55 mph.

In the fifth tenth of a second (a "split second"), the driver is impaled on the steering column and his lungs begin to fill with blood. 

In the sixth tenth of a second, the driver's feet are ripped out of his shoes, the brake pedal snaps off and the car frame buckles in the middle.  The driver's head smashes into the through the windshield as the rear wheels fall back to earth.

In the seventh tenth of a second, doors fly open, hinges rip loose and the seats break free, striking the driver from behind.  The driver does not feel the seat striking him, because he is already dead!

A lot has happened in less than one second.  think about how long one second is the next time you decide not to wear a seat belt.  Think about how long seven-tenths of a second is.  Then think how long eternity is. 

 

http://www.toolboxtopics.com/Contributed/Seven-Tenths%20of%20a%20Second.htm

 

"Safety" advances like padded dashboards instead of hard metal surfaces, safety glass, collapsible steering columns that no longer impale drivers, seat belts and shoulder harnesses for all seating positions, side beams to decrease intrusion from side impacts, child safety seats, computer modeling, scientific crash-test comparisons, and of course, air bags, have helped. We've cut the number to "only" about 33,000 deaths per year now.

 

Yes, the auto accident death rate has fallen steadily over the years since the statistic was first measured in 1921, from 24 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled to "ONLY" 1.1 deaths per hundred-million-vehicle-miles-traveled now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

 

All well and good, unless you are that one.

Edited October 21, 2014 by kostby

[kostby]

Some C-Max hybrids are in the September 26th recall.   Since the dealer has my car right now, I am calling to ask or them to check.  

The C-MAX recall you cited is not for potentially explosive airbag inflators, but for a Control Module (essentially, a computer circuit board) controlling air-bag deployment.

(There are better sources for this info, but this is the first one I found):

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/09/26/ford-lincoln-mkz-fusion-cmax-airbag-seatbelt-defect/16258897/

[Kelleytoons]

Yeah, so far I haven't seen anything to indicate C-Maxs are affected.

 

One thing that's important to remember -- air bags aren't *nearly* as effective as preventing injuries compared to seat belts.  Being a passive system (in which the operator does not need to do anything, even as trivial as buckling their belt) it's very helpful for those who aren't so conscientious, but in reality you'd most likely be better off not having an air bag if you DID use your seat belt all the time (because an air bag even properly deployed often causes injuries -- just not critical ones).

 

I want this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyhkBU1yaw

[TopherTheME]

Another reason I'm glad I turned in my 2005 Civic. There was another recall a few years back that my car missed by one year for the passenger air bag grenading and killing people.