jj@sri-unix (08/16/82)
Despite what we have been told in this newsgroup, airbags are NOT safe. If you read any article in the literature, it will tell you that airbags: 1). Make people deaf. 2). Have no effect in anything other than head-on collisions, and that you then DO NOT have seatbelts to protect you if you do the reasonable thing and try to MISS whatever it is that you are going to hit. 3) Are set to trigger whenever a person could strike the dashboard, and with usual government thoroughness, a very weak person in a very slow accident. Apparantly hitting a parking lot divider(concrete railroad tie) at 10-15 mph will do it IF your suspension bottoms, and the sensor detects the "impact" of the suspension bottoming. As far as I can see, the only effect of airbags is to UNPROTECT me in most of the accidents that I might be in. I have been in two significant accidents in my life, and seatbelts saved my butt (TO put it MILDLY, I never had to go to the doctor, despite a 35mph impact in a 1964 car with only lap belt) both times. In both cases, airbags would have let me pound out my brains on the door, or perhaps fly through the open drivers side window onto a busy freeway... As far as use is concerned, FREE CHOICE IS NOT NONSENSE. I DEMAND the choice of a SAFE automobile, and seatbelts are much safer, given current steering wheel and dash standards, than either automatic seatbelts or airbags.(Look at the number of destroyed knees that the automatic seatbely has caused.) If the insurance rates are to be unnaffected by fools, and I certainly agree with that, then make it statutory neglegence to not wear a seatbelt when one is available, furthermore, make each person responsible for their own decision. (I have had people refuse to wear seatbelts until I started to toss them out of the car, and then take them off again when I started to move. They walked home.)