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Re: [OM] [OT] Doin' the Airbag Bash

Subject: Re: [OM] [OT] Doin' the Airbag Bash
From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 23:01:07 -0400
Comments at bottom.

At 5:52 AM +0000 9/23/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 20:28:21 -0500
>From: Jay Maynard <jmaynard@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [OM] [OT] Doin' the Airbag Bash
>
>On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 09:12:11PM -0400, Tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 22, 2002 at 13:07, James N. McBride 
> > <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote re "RE: [OM] [OT] Doin' the Airbag Bash" saying:
> > > I saw some interesting data on cost a while back. If all the lives
> > > claimed to have been saved, by air bag proponents, were indeed saved by
> > > the bags the cost would amount to about $ 19,000,000 per life. If most of
> > > those lives would have been also saved by the seat belts the economics
> > > get interesting. What do you think about the function of your bag John?
> > > Do you think the seat belt would have been enough protection without the
> > > bag? 
> > How about injury prevention benefits too?
> > Still, the only survivor of Princess Di's crash was the guy in the 
> > "suicide" seat (front passenger) who was the only one to have done up his 
> > seatbelt.
>
><paramedic mode>
>
>Anyone who depends solely on their airbag to protect them in an accident
>will find out, the hard way, that it's no substitute for a seat belt. I've
>cut a couple of folks out of cars with deployed airbags who didn't survive
>to learn from their experience. By comparison, I've never cut someone's seat
>belt to extricate them, and only unbuckled three patients, two of whom were
>merely too nervous to do it themselves, all in 17 years of volunteer EMS.
>
>I used to believe airbags were basically useless if the user also had on a
>properly worn seat belt, and were an overall minus because folks would think
>they didn't need the seat belt in an airbag-equipped car. Then, my sister
>had an accident: a church bus pulled out across a major highway right in
>front of her 1998 Corolla. She struck the bus at about 60 MPH. She had a
>sprained wrist and broken foot, but that was all aside from bruises. The doc
>treating her said that the air bag probably saved a torn aorta. I'm not sure
>I believe that, but it's believable enough that I'm not as negative about
>air bags as I used to be.
>
><paramedic mode off> 


I would believe the bit about the torn aorta.  It does happen.  All this stuff 
(seat belts and airbags) is designed for collisions at much less than 60 MPH.  
At that speed, the typical 3-point belt isn't sufficient; these things are 
designed for and tested at 35 MPH.

What convinced me (in the early 1970s) to wear seatbelts was seeing racecar 
drivers walk away from 180 MPH accidents.  Now granted they used 5-point belts 
(lap, both shoulders, crotch, big buckle in the middle) and also their helmets 
were tethered to the frame of the car, but still it proved the basic point that 
belts really work.  (Actually, the helmet tether may have come later.)

I wrecked a Volvo 240 (4-door sedan) in the late 1970s.  The collision speed 
was somethiing like 35 MPH, although traffic was going more like 60 MPH.  The 
only damage to me was that despite the 3-point seatbelt my head was thrown into 
the steering wheel, which broke, absorbing the kinetic energy of my head.  The 
wheel struck on the upper lip, above the teeth and below the nose, right at the 
edge of the hard palate, a very strong part of the skull.  There was some 
tearing to flesh, requiring stitches and a year for the torn nerves to regrow, 
but the injuries were minor.  An airbag would have prevented even this injury.  
I was very lucky that the wheel didn't hit teeth or nose.

The air bag came in because the safety folk, having succeeded in making the car 
makers provide seatbelts, failed in getting people to wear them.  (The belts on 
all but the Volvo were pretty awkward back then, which didn't help.  Detroit 
abhored seatbelts, and wanted them to fail.)  The problem is that air bags 
don't work all that well without seat belts, because it's too difficult to get 
the airborn person to hit the bag squarely, and to not slide underneath, etc.  
The safety folk don't like to talk about this.  

Anyway, the bags were required by law to protect an unbelted 200-pound male, 
which meant that the airbags had to be so forceful that they are a danger to 
children and small women, and the recent statistics have been that especially 
for small women drivers, the airbag may cause a net reduction in survival.  The 
problem is that small drivers cannot get far enough away from the steering 
wheel, and if the airbag goes off, it can tear their head off.  This is why 
there are all those notes saying to put your seat way back; for some reason the 
car companies don't want to explain the precise reason for that piece of 
advice.  (The advice I have given to my 5'4" wife is to jam herself into the 
seatback if she sees that an accident will happen.  If she is able to do this, 
which isn't as unlikely as it sounds, she will most likely be OK, albeit a bit 
banged up.) Air bags are getting more sophisticated, with half-power and 
full-power inflation depending on the expected severity of the cras!
h, but this will be bought at the expense of reliability.  

I'm in the social darwinist camp.  I would de-power the airbags, and let the 
dimwitted 200-pounders fend for themselves.

Joe Gwinn


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