Are the optional airbags worth it ?

[jcove]

Originally Posted by why?

Front airbags should not be standard. They only are because moron governments make them mandatory by law.

Actually, you are wrong. A seatbelt can protect you in any crash if you are wearing it. Many people that get hit on the side that are not wearing seatbelts get injured much more then if they were wearing them.

You are wrong again. The sides of vehicles are heavily reinforced so they can take the entire impact of a vehicle. Also, if you have ever watched a vehicle run right into the side of another one you will notice that the entire vehicle is pushed. This is the way cars were designed so that occupants are protected from all accidents.

You should learn what you are talking about. You actually have a better chance of surviving being hit on the side directly because the car will move sideways MUCH easier than it can move backwards if you are hit head on.

Again, you are using subjective ratings. What does a poor rating mean? Does it mean the occupant is guaranteed to die, or just that the vehicle did worse than average?

"In each side-struck vehicle are two instrumented SID-IIs dummies representing a small (5th percentile) female or a 12-year-old adolescent. These dummies are positioned in the driver seat and the rear seat behind the driver."

From your link. This means these tests are worthless if you are an average size human being.

Not to mention the site does not say what each rating actually means.

It also looks like they place the car directly in front of the object hitting it, and the vehicle did not move sideways. This is not what would happen in the real world. The vehicle being struck would absorb the impact by moving sideways.


Rofl, one story of a REAR impact and you think you know what you are talking about

I bet you've never been in a high speed side impact collision.

Well guess what? I have.

I was 7, I was not wearing my seatbelt, I was in the rear seat on the drivers side. An Olds 88 struck us going at least 40 mph, prolly faster. We were in a buick.

Guess what? The car moved sideways. In fact, the car moved at least 10 feet sideways, and spun at the same time. The car was pushed from the middle of the intersection all the way to the grass 5 or 6 feet from the stop sign which we started. I am being conservative with my estimates, the car prolly moved longer, and chances are it actually went airbourne.

My 7 year old non seatbelt wearing self needed 45 stitches in my face. I had no other injuries. My father, who was driving, had minor pain in his side which lasted only a week.

That was the only injuries.

Every car sold today is safer then the buick I was in during that 1986 crash.

Guess what? I was also hit in the rear by a drunk driver prolly around the same speed you were. I was not injured. A rear collision most certainly will not help you know what a side impact collision will be like.

If you want more accident stories, I have plenty of them for you. I have been in more then my share of accidents.

BTW, I LOVE how you changed the subject because you knew there was no way you could out debate me.

Airbags are very heavy, and they reduce gas mileage and performance and they have not yet been proven to do anything besides. Until it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that they do anything they should not be forced upon us by govenrment morons.

Airbags save lives....end of story. I have worked in the automotive industry for a few years and I've seen my share of accidents growing up. Vehicles are NOT meant to withstand the full impact of an SUV at full tilt on the road/highway. Vehicles are designed to withstand some impact and depending on where you are hit, some are better than others, but for the most part there is what, maybe 5 - 6 inches of structure between you and the hood of the vehicle hitting you. I'd much rather bet my life on the air bag than without.

All that being said, I understand that we are not going to change your opinion, and you are not going to change ours. Lets agree to disagree and stop the fighting. This is stupid. We are grown adults here. Let's just all agree this is a great car and move on.

[why?]

Originally Posted by corey415

I understand your theory, but being hit by an SUV in the side in a small car like the Yaris can be extremely severe, even at a relatively low speed (under 40 mph).
C'mon, be realistic; you know they cannot predict death. They arent fortune tellers. Poor means more potential for injury/death than average. Poor means more potential for wonderful things like punctured lungs and severe brain damage.
...
I am confident you are the minority with this viewpoint. I prefer to side with the safety/crash test experts. Out of curiosity, have you taken out/disabled the front airbags on your current car, since they are so deadly?
Also, check out this video...
http://www.markbach.com/stuff/Dateli...ide_Impact.mpg
Right click save as...

That is what I am saying, poor means worse than AVERAGE. My reasoning is average is very good, especially considering 95% of the human race is larger than the test dummies they use.

If I disabled or took out the airbags in my car I would not pass a safety inspection. Plus, it would damage the resale value of my car, which is important since I am getting ready to sell it to pay for a Yaris.

The video is interesting, but points out 2 flaws in their test. The first is they use dummies that are smaller then 95% of the human race. The second one is that the test is designed for the worst possible scenario, one that might not ever happen in the real world.

I believe airbags make the manufacturers lazy. I know they can make a small car get a good rating on that test without airbags, but they let their engineers lean on the airbags. I will wait to see how the Yaris does on this test, because the Yaris uses next generation metal and structure design compared to the cars in the video.

At least the video tells us what the Institute thinks a poor rating means.

Originally Posted by jcove

Airbags save lives....end of story. I have worked in the automotive industry for a few years and I've seen my share of accidents growing up. Vehicles are NOT meant to withstand the full impact of an SUV at full tilt on the road/highway. Vehicles are designed to withstand some impact and depending on where you are hit, some are better than others, but for the most part there is what, maybe 5 - 6 inches of structure between you and the hood of the vehicle hitting you. I'd much rather bet my life on the air bag than without.

All that being said, I understand that we are not going to change your opinion, and you are not going to change ours. Lets agree to disagree and stop the fighting. This is stupid. We are grown adults here. Let's just all agree this is a great car and move on.

Can you prove they save lives beyond a reasonable doubt? We know they have murdered 105 people in the USA since 1998.
And if you look at the video that Corey415 provided, it will show you that airbags do almost nothing in many small cars.

This is a discussion board. That means we discuss things. When discussing things different people brings different perspectives, and if one is sincere one might learn something.

I do not claim to be an expert on airbags. I do claim, however, that it has not been proven yet that airbags save lives. I feel I am right, but since I do not know everything about airbags, and I do not know every study that has ever been done, I might not be right.

I am here to debate and to learn. I am sincere in that. I love arguing about almost anything, for if everyone always agrees about everything, then no one will ever learn anything.

I HIGHLY doubt that you go through life agreeing with everyone you meet on everything. And that is a GOOD thing.

[jcove]

why?, like I said, let's agree to disagree. Sorry if you were offended by what I said. I will never agree that new airbags are dangerous, and you will never agree that they are safe. Let's shake hands and move on.

Oh and to clarify what I wrote, I was talking about side airbags, as the front are not optional. I still feel that front airbags are neccesary, but that wasn't what I was commenting on.

[why?]

I wasn't offended at all.

I still am going to try to keep this thread open to see if anyone has any new info that could prove me wrong.

If it is proven that they are worth the cost in money and weight, then it would be silly for me not to buy them.

[SmellyTofu]

5 out of 5 star EuroNCAP rating with the 7 airbag option. Good enough proof for me to tick the very very very cheap tickbox that I would not want to use.

http://www.euroncap.com/images/resul...asheet%202.pdf

Take what you want from this report but I'll vote with my pencil.

[why?]

That is impressive. Too bad they did not do a side impact.

However if you look at the safety equipment listed we aren't getting the most important, which is the side curtain airbags.

The other thing to note is that the IIHS tests are more demanding than the European tests.

If you look at the results, only 10 vehicles score less then 3 stars, out of of 61. That is only 16% of the vehicles tested. Makes me wonder about the test.

[SmellyTofu]

Have you seen a 4WD with a big bullbar intrude into the passenger area? I'm not an expert on this so you might be right or not (I choose to trust the EuroNCAP and ANCAP) but I believe curtain airbags help keep your head away from any protrusions into the head area. This is from videos I see of side impacts, it's not a pretty sight to see dummy's head get in contact with bullbars.

There are talks to increasing the star rating higher.. and I agree. 5 stars will soon becoming meaningless. Still, 5 stars is better than where it's been before. I'd rather be hit an airbag than the steering wheel rim.

[why?]

What I said was that side curtain airbags are the most important.

Side curtain airbags will NOT be available on the Yaris in the USA.

I still beleive engineers rely too much on airbags and not enough on engineering.

[AestheticalFilm]

side curtain air bags are available in the us, but they do not come standard.

so basically, if you care not to have them, dont pay for em

[why?]

They are?

Just looked, and they are. Cool. I am pretty sure only side airbags were listed before.

The thing is, I can't not have airbags. The government forces me to waste money and weight on front airbags.

[SmellyTofu]

Come on .. u cannot be serious. The weight of a set of front airbags would be the same weight you have in the boot called a spare tyre... also (if you have any) lose some of your spare tyre hanging around the gut area and you'll make it up. Also toss all the rear seats out. That'd be worth stuff all.

If you really hate them, just disconnect them. Just don't expect anyone to come to the party when it comes to compensation if something goes wrong. All the millions of dollar perfecting the system by EVERY manufacturer can't be THAT wrong can they?? You can't be the only one suffering from the "everyone must be wrong" syndrome? Just because you may have survived one pretty bad accident doesn't mean it's the same for subsequent unfortunate events.

[why?]

Airbags have been the singular cause for at least 105 US deaths. Who knows how many more around the world.

It has not been reasonably proven that they save lifes. It has been proven that they can kill, and that if you are not the average 6' tall 180lb man then the odds are 50/50 whether they will help or hurt.

In 2003 there were 6,328,000 car accidents in the US. There were 2.9 million injuries and 42,643 people were killed in auto accidents.

There were 231,389,998 vehicles operating in 2003.

So less then 1% of all the vehicles in the USA in 2003 were involved in accidents. In simpler terms, 1 out of every 80 vehicles operating in the USA were involved in crashes, and only 1 out of 5426 were fatal.

Some interesting accident facts.

In 2003, there were 1.48 fatalities per 100 million vehicles miles travelled, which means there were about 426,000,000,000,000 miles driven on US roads. That means there was 1 accident per every 146,896,552 miles driven.

So odds are against getting in an accident.

"NHTSA recorded 238 deaths due to airbags between 1990 and 2002.

quote:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that airbags installed in automobiles have saved some 10,000 lives as of January 2004 - However, a just-released study by a statistician at the University of Georgia, however, casts doubt on that assertion.

In fact, said UGA statistics professor Mary C. Meyer, a new analysis of existing data indicates that, controlling for other factors, airbags are actually associated with slightly increased probability of death in accidents.

[AestheticalFilm]

whoa, did this thread just loop?

[why?]

That is what happens when new people show up, some things get re-discussed. It is not a bad thing.

[AestheticalFilm]

nope, i'll agree with you there,

just trying to bring some humor to this thread,

thought it could use a laugh, guess im not very funny

[why?]

lol, nothing wrong with being light hearted.

Taking things too seriously is bad.

[eight_heads]

well i also ride a motorcycle and feel pretty much the same way with the optional airbags, if it's your time, it's your time.... and i also feel airbags can help and be dangerous at the same time, but anyone driving a hunk of metal weighing at least a ton+ is in danger of killing themselves or someone else.. of course, i do wear a full face helmet one the bike....maybe if you are really afraid of injury you should also wear a full face helmet while driving your car... it's alot cheaper than the optional airbags

[wwwh355]

Originally Posted by eight_heads

well i also ride a motorcycle and feel pretty much the same way with the optional airbags, if it's your time, it's your time.... and i also feel airbags can help and be dangerous at the same time, but anyone driving a hunk of metal weighing at least a ton+ is in danger of killing themselves or someone else.. of course, i do wear a full face helmet one the bike....maybe if you are really afraid of injury you should also wear a full face helmet while driving your car... it's alot cheaper than the optional airbags

In fact, I saw somebody did that b4.
what can I say..........its SO SAFE :|