The Takata airbag recall was the biggest automotive safety recall ever, with more than 67 million inflators recalled in the United States, covering a huge range of makes and models. There are at least 52 million vehicles out there now with a different airbag design, from a completely different company, that are on the verge of a recall.
The National Highway Safety Transportation Administration held a fairly rare public meeting yesterday to discuss its initial decision to recommend this massive recall as another indication that this is maybe happening.
While we’re at it, GM presented its counter-proposal to the UAW while a greater strike clouds Detroit’s otherwise sunny prospects. Tesla lowered its prices, again. And the California 300 is this weekend!
Ok, let’s do this fam.
The Delphi/Autoliv/ARC Massive Recall That Might Be Coming
Why is this happening again? Didn’t we just have a giant airbag recall? What’s going on here? This is an entirely new recall, covering different vehicles, with airbags from a few companies that are not Takata.
Some background: airbags are a key safety device and have been required in cars since the 1990s. When a vehicle has a crash at a certain speed a signal is sent to the airbag’s electronic control unit and it inflates the airbag by igniting a propellant that fills the bag with a gas. This has to happen extremely fast and creates a great deal of force.
If that system is compromised the occupants could be sprayed with shrapnel, which obviously compounds the damage caused by the initial crash. Here’s how NHTSA describes what’s going on with these airbags in its initial report:
Based on its investigation, NHTSA believes that ruptures may result from the weld slag produced by the friction welding manufacturing process. Should weld slag of a sufficient size become dislodged, it can cause a blockage of the inflator exit orifice when the air bag deploys. A blockage of sufficient size will cause an over pressurization and rupture of the inflator, leading to the potential forced propulsion of shrapnel or metal fragments from the inflator into the passenger compartment. Additional inflator ruptures are expected to occur in the future, risking more serious injuries and deaths, if they are not recalled and replaced.
So far there have been seven confirmed ruptures with these airbags, leading to one fatality and multiple facial injuries. At the hearing, the son (pictured above) of Marlene Beaudoin, who was killed when an airbag in her Chevy Traverse ruptured, spoke. You can watch the whole hearing here.
“The magnitude of suffering caused by that inflator not being recalled is exponential,” Tarvis told the hearing, noting Beaudoin had 10 children and he assumed responsibility for six siblings.
“More moms don’t need to die, more kids don’t have to be raised by their siblings.”
Here’s another important piece from the Reuters report:
ARC vice president Stephen Gold opposed a recall, telling the hearing the data and extensive testing suggested the seven incidents linked to the inflators were “isolated” and “not indicative of a systemic defect.”
Gold added that setting such a low threshold for a recall demand – seven incidents out of 52 million vehicles – “is unprecedented in the history of NHTSA… and will have deep consequences for the auto industry.”
NHTSA said the more appropriate context for the seven incidents was not 52 million vehicles but 2.6 million inflators estimated to have deployed to date. Agency officials said the odds of a serious injury were one in 370,000 deployments of the inflators.
This is a real: Glass half-full/glass will send deadly shards into your face kind of situation.
I don’t know for sure what will happen, but here’s the list of automakers involved, with vehicles built between 2000 and 2018 being included:
The subject inflators were incorporated into air bag modules used in vehicles manufactured by 12 vehicle manufacturers: BMW of North America, LLC, FCA US LLC, Ford Motor Company, General Motors LLC, Hyundai Motor America, Inc., Kia America, Inc., Maserati North America, Inc., Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, Porsche Cars North America, Inc., Tesla Inc., Toyota Motor North America, Inc., and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.
Airbags are such a generic part that they cover the whole range of vehicles from Audi eTrons to Kia Optimas.
Confusingly, the airbags were produced by both Delphi Automotive Systems and ARC Automotive (on a license). Delphi is now owned by Autoliv, so it’s not clear what the best shorthand is for this specific recall if it comes, but given that most of the airbags were manufactured by ARC I think the “ARC Airbag Recall” is probably the most accurate?
The agency is taking public comments through early December and will then make a ruling on the necessity of a recall.
GM Offers New Deal, UAW Trolls Everyone
Tune into @UAW's Facebook page at 2pm on Friday, October 6th to see who gets the rose! pic.twitter.com/evsr7ebs3w
— Shawn Fain (@ShawnFainUAW) October 5, 2023
UAW President Shawn Fain is a little bit of a troll, right? Just a little. He’s having fun. We’re all having fun.
This “The Bachelor” meme is indicating that more strikes are probably coming (those are the roses, I guess?). Basically, every Friday afternoon Fain has a livestream and announces more strikes.
Unlike Ford, which has tended to show its counteroffers, we haven’t seen the most recent GM offer, but GM did send this statement to The Detroit News:
“We can confirm that we provided a counter offer to the UAW’s most recent proposal — our sixth since the start of negotiations,” GM spokesperson David Barnas said in a statement. “We believe we have a compelling offer that would reward our team members and allow GM to succeed and thrive into the future. We continue to stand ready and willing to negotiate in good faith 24/7 to reach an agreement.”
Will the trash can make another appearance? Yeah, probably.
Tesla Lowers Price, Again
I guess my TMD about Chinese automaker BYD outpacing Tesla really struck a nerve because Tesla just announced price cuts for the… I don’t know, 900th time? I’ve lost count.
All automakers do this, but traditional car companies sell through dealers and generally use incentives to raise and lower the prices of their cars to balance volume and profits. Because of Tesla’s direct sales model, Elon Musk can just go out and announce price cuts and everyone gets excited. It’s pretty smart.
I’ll let Automotive News summarize the changes:
The base Model 3 and Long Range variants received a $1,250 discount. The base now starts at $40,630 with shipping and the Long Range at $47,630 with shipping. The Model 3 Performance, with a $2,250 price cut, starts at $52,630 with shipping.
Tesla trimmed $2,000 off the Model Y Long Range, which now starts at $50,130 with shipping, and also the Performance trim, which starts at $54,130 with shipping.
A year ago, the Model Y Long Range, which was the least expensive trim at the time, started at $67,440. Also at that time, the crossover did not qualify for the $7,500 federal EV tax incentive because Tesla had reached its quota. On Jan. 1 of this year, the Model Y and the Model 3 became newly eligible for a new version of the incentive.
That’s a huge decrease over time. In one year the Model Y Long Range has dropped in pure MSRP from about $67k to about $50k. Toss in a $7,500 tax credit (which it now qualifies for) and the total cost is closer to $43k delivered. I mean, that’s a smoking deal.
The California 300/Roval Are This Weekend
I know I’m not the only one who cares about motorsports, so I’m going to use this little bit of time I have here to let you know about some racing this weekend. In particular, the California 300 has just started. Here are some details:
Attendees can look forward to a jam-packed weekend featuring off-road racing, camping, and entertainment. Activities will range from the Off-Road Festival at the Start/Finish Midway, which will host race action and displays from top off-road brands, to the Main Stage, where race finishers will be showcased and event updates will be provided. The Start/Finish Midway is conveniently located near the entrance to the Stoddard Valley OHV area, just off the I-15 freeway. To get there, take the Outlet Center Drive exit, head east, and look to your right.
Check it out! I’ll be watching the NASCAR Charlotte Roval races this weekend (this is where NASCAR races on a modified Charlotte Motor Speedway that incorporates both the banked corners and the interior “road course.”).
If you need someone to root for, on Saturday at 3:00 PM (ET) on NBC you can watch our friend Parker Kligerman try to overcome a 1-point deficit to make it to the next round of the playoffs.
The Big Question
Recalls are expensive, complex, and time-consuming. If you’re a regulator do you ultimately go forward with this recall or are the risks low enough?
Well I am not a math wiz. But if the UAW wants a 40% raise and a 20% reduction in hours that translates to a 57.5% raise. Transfer that to everybody getting it now instead of over 8 years another 16%. So a 73% raise plus a guaranteed pension. Yeah invest in any other car company because the big 3 is gonna be the Porsche driver trying to compensate for 3.
Good thing that’s not how it works
So, how much of the cost of the car is labor? 5% I believe. I think it will be ok.
For the most part, I agree with everything you said, though I actually think Tesla reducing prices makes sense. It’s not exactly ripping off customers either. The longer you produce the same vehicles with the same tooling, the cheaper it gets. Tesla’s whole lineup has been in production for quite a while now, it makes sense to boost sales of an aging lineup by reducing prices as they become cheaper to build. Of course, they can’t do that forever and will have to update everything eventually, but for the time being I can’t blame them for trying to stay competitive in whatever way they can.
If people would just wear their damn seatbelts….
Airbags work better with seat belts, and save lives, with or without.
For years, our engineering department did our best to get EPP into the passenger compartment. We had dash designs that incorporated all HVAC channels, and had room to compress 8″ if needed.
Excerpt from 2 months ago post to : “Pushin the Cushion”
From 1996 to 2003 I worked on exactly this concept out of the U.S. headquarters for an international concern that had 60% world market share of EPP energy absorbing bumper cores. I CNC machined and fabricated thermoforming tooling, and thermoformed A class surface sheet stocks onto prototype IPs, door cards, center consoles, package shelves, headliners, and A,B,C pillar covers. It was Not to replace seat belts, or air bags, but to offer some level of energy absorption to any surface you, your dog, whatever, may come into contact with in an accident. What you touch in your interior that has give is only 1.5mm to 2.5mm of PU backed sheet stocks over hard and brittle injected molded plastic substrates that offer no energy absorption. I am a big fan of side curtain airbags that offer some protection from head striking side window, not so much for the ones pointed at your face. They come out like a shotgun blast, have broken thumbs and noses, and deflate on impact to serve their function, but are still blocking your view, and have no residual energy absorption if it happens to be a multi collision event. Personally, I’d prefer ignition lockout till 4 or 5 point belts locked than blast aimed at face.
Exploding shrapnel! Just do the recall.
“A, times B, times C, equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall… we don’t do one.”
“Which automaker do you work for again?”
“A major one.”
Immediately where my brain went with that last line.
At first I was relieved that Mazda was unaffected by ARC airbags which means our one good car is safe but the I realized it wen back to 2000 which means the Ford and Buick beaters could get recalled.
We own a 2016 Mazda6 and a 2016 Mazda CX-5, so I’m sighing with relief at this recall surprisingly not affecting us. I also have a 1990 Pontiac Sunbird (hence my username, but it is sans airbag (and any other safety feature – besides seatbelts).
What other safety features do you want?
Working brakes.
It does have working brakes. They just don’t have the new-fangled anti-lock technology. (Haha.)
Honestly I think every airbag will get recalled because they all won’t last for eternity and cars will be on the road longer than they “should” be.
Stuff like this is why I prefer passive safety measures like safety harnesses, roll cages, great driver visibility, etc. over crap reliant on proprietary sensors and tech that’ll all crap out relatively quickly and when you need to replace them you best hope the car is still in production because the sensors and tech were made in massive batches in China and they’re not built to be serviced so once they die you either scrap the car or spend a boatload on custom fixes.
All the major airbag recalls so far have been related to manufacturing defects that were present from when the airbags were brand-new, as opposed to age. Early first generation airbags from the 1970s have been proven to work perfectly as designed many decades later with zero maintenance, but they were built properly to start with
Untrue, the Takata recall very much had an age element to it, the propellant used became more reactive as it absorbed moisture from the air, which takes time and thus is related to age. That’s why the initial focus when replacements weren’t widely available was on older vehicles in warm, humid climates that would be the most affected.
With that being said, I’m not sure those “perfect” airbags from the 70s would really be safer… maybe they still work as designed in the 70s, but they wouldn’t benefit from improved control over inflation rate necessary to accommodate people of different weight, stature, and seating position, crashing at different speeds (not to mention the improvements in vehicle structure, crumple zones and crash worthiness) that the decades since then have brought.
The Takata issue was absolutely due to a defect, not age, properly designed and sealed airbags using the correct propellant should not be susceptible to moisture deterioration over time, that’s what the problem was, every airbag they built, regardless of age, was ultimately recalled because they were all flawed from day one
Much as I love my newly acquired 1990 Miata, I sometimes wonder if the factory airbag would work if something were to happen… Would it fail to deploy? Or worse, would it instead explode from age and injure me worse than if it hadn’t deployed? Is it better or worse to have a 30 year-old airbag than no airbag at all? I could put an aftermarket steering wheel on it to get rid of the airbag entirely, but it feels wrong to eliminate what’s supposed to be a safety feature… Don’t know how doable it is to replace the airbag just to be safe. Seems like they should be replaced with age like tires and seals, but nobody tells you how often airbags should be replaced, and that’s a pretty major task.
When Rally cars are built they remove every airbag. If you have the proper harnesses, seats, etc. I’d argue a modern rally car is safer than than the production variant of that same car, people just don’t want race seats or multi-point safety harnesses.
While that’s true, those safety features are only effective when you also wear a proper racing suit and helmet. Nobody’s putting all that stuff on to drive to the grocery store or a regular meeting or whatever. Without a racing suit or helmet, all of those safety features become deadly, with the multi-point safety harnesses putting your neck at risk and the rollcage being something you can crack your head on. These are necessary in a racing context where your suit protects you and those features protect your suit, and the whole makes for a very effective protective package, but in ordinary driving circumstances they are more hazardous than helpful.
Go watch Death Proof if you wanna see why race car safety features have little application on road cars…
As in, you gotta be smoking something to think that’s a deal, nyuk nyuk.
Tesla is reducing its prices because they’re failing to meet growth targets. They’re failing to meet growth targets because demand is plateauing. Demand is plateauing because frankly, Teslas aren’t as good as they used to be. To review:
So the TLDR version is that Musk is building himself a toxic brand and it’s easier to find alternative EVs now that everyone else has either caught up or surpassed Tesla.
I think Tesla’s saving grace will be licensing out their charging tech.
The charging network is the reason my friend held his nose and bought a used Model 3 after having trouble charging his Leaf on a road trip. This guy has had a Nissan Leaf since 2011 and an all electric fleet for several years.
That’s a good summary, yeah.
I’m not sure what Tesla’s angle is with giving NACS to SAE. Having exclusive access to a proprietary charging network was Tesla’s biggest selling point. Seems like a bad business move to sell that advantage.
If they didn’t sell that advantage, they were likely to lose the charging war. It was a better move to ensure NACS became the actual standard charging plug than it would’ve been to change once CCS (or whatever else that was an open standard) became the official (or at least de facto) standard. Now, the Superchargers have a massive advantage in both reputation and proliferation, since other charging networks are going to have to retrofit.
Tesla will make a lot on charging, probably, and they won’t end up with a big expense to switch. Gambling on the charging situation remaining an advantage for their vehicles would’ve been far riskier.
Unless I’m reading it wrong, it’s one death and six injuries related to the airbag.
Plus are any of them due to shrapnel from people gluing stuff to their steering wheels, dash?
I know it’s fun to crap on the government, but I think they know the difference between assembly/design issues and user error.
Obviously safety devices shouldn’t be killing or maiming people, but the risk is EXTREMELY low. I wonder if it’s isolated to a specific batch/timeframe/factory. I think that should probably be looked into very seriously before enacting another multi-billion dollar recall that’s only going to end up costing the consumer.
But at the same time, a list of every affected model should probably be published just so people are aware.. cause it sounds like all of my cars could be on this list.
One thing that makes me curious, is this a design flaw or a manufacturing one? That would make the approach to the recall different, wouldn’t it?
My guess based on some real-world production welding experience on what controls the manufacturer should have in place. There should be a process control step for the welding after X number of welds to weld a sample and visual examine at a minimum and should perform additional nondestructive testing to confirm that the welding process is staying within acceptable parameters. Processes change over time as components wear, and need to be replaced. Leaving slag behind is a big no-no and a sign that the parameters of the weld changed somehow and this kind of out-of-spec condition should have been caught and a known number of welded components identified for either further examination -before- being assembled at the next highest assembly level. If they don’t have such controls in place, huge fail and basically none of their parts can be trusted to be -good-. Yikes!
It’s 1 in 370,000 to date of systems that have been activated. That doesn’t sound like a need to recall the other 50.4 million that are out there.
I decided to see what actually driving a Tesla was like last weekend, to see if the price drops and tax incentive eligibility were enough to offset my preconceived buttons about how much I’d hate the user interface. Long story short, no. I just hate the UI that much. Great acceleration, decent suspension, but the controls just made me angry and anxious. The 3 and the Y just seem like they were designed like FSD was actually a thing that would and did work so that the notional driver wouldn’t have to interact with the car to actually drive it.
Yeah, the folks who are fans of it tell you that it’s great, because you don’t actually need controls for things when you set things to automatic or use voice controls, and it just doesn’t work for me. I adjust things, even things that are automatic, and I need to be able to do so easily. Voice controls just don’t work well enough, and are more of a hassle than buttons and knobs.
Just passed on a used Volvo PHEV yesterday mostly because it had too many functions put into infotainment.
At least the Volvo still has a turn signal stalk. I HATED having to look away from the road to find the turn signal button on the Tesla. I also hate voice control for just about everything, too.
The one at the show might have been set up badly to showcase to potential buyers, but I went to an EV showcase the other weekend and I discovered I don’t actually fit in a Model 3 somehow. I was very surprised by this development. Though I didn’t try the Model Y or any of the others. The interface looked terrible but I couldn’t even get that far. You would think the minimalist packaging would give you room but apparently no.
In terms of EV fit from that show: Everything from Hyundai Kia – though the Genesis felt a bit cramped. The Lucid Air fits. The Ford Mach-E is a bit narrow for my apparently fat ass but mostly fine. Same with Audi and BMW – I don’t remember which model the Audi was, the BMW was an i4. There was a Mercedes EQS but it was accompanied by a weird dude in a suit so I didn’t look too closely.
I’ve found that having enough room for my longer-than-average femurs, and enough adjustability to get both the pedals and the wheel a comfortable distance from the seat is not the easiest thing to find. Not just in EVs, but generally.
As someone who is also blessed with ample femurs* I’ve been finding that knee room has become surprisingly sparse in a lot of modern vehicles – especially crossovers. But 5 years ago this wasn’t a huge problem.
*My legs are seriously disproportionately long. One of my best friends is a full three inches taller than me and our legs are the same length. I have the same inseam as a guy I met who was 6’9″.
I have longer leg than torso proportions, but nothing too extreme and I have the same problem. Everything today has a cramped driver’s space for knees unless I want to sit in the back seat, even the bigger cars (which seem no bigger inside). Trucks/SUVs are better in that the higher seats allow more knee bending to reach the pedals, but I hate driving them and don’t want something so damn big. Oddly, my GR86 is fairly roomy in regard to the center console intruding on knee space, though it took me a while to figure out a good position with the stupid starter button being in the completely wrong spot. The other thing is seats. I have a 31″ waist and find the seat bottoms to be cramped as hell and stupid sports bolsters (OK on the ’86 or the Focus ST maybe, but damn CUVs and such seem to have this problem too, if to a lesser degree). On the sides, I get, but I never slide around on the bottoms to need the bolsters, even after chopping them out and the GR pulls over 1g in turns. then there’s the foam. My early ’80s Subarus with their 10 pound seats were more comfortable for more hours than, say, an Ascent. All the dumb BS they put in cars, but seat comfort seems to be designed by people whose vision boards include pictures of iron maidens and Catherine wheels and I don’t mean the bands.
Hmm.. that’s interesting..
I did test-drive a Model3 years ago (the first year it was available) extensively (for almost an hour, highway, side streets, traffic etc.) and I really liked it, as in ‘driving dynamics, comfort, visibility’ and realized the lack of a proper dash didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, nor did the build quality (which wasn’t as bad as a Model S at the time).
So in the end I thought I wouldn’t mind buying one the next time I need a car, and the price would come down in the 40’s instead of the 60’s, but if the whole driver interface has been changed radically since then, maybe I ought to reconsider or test-drive one now.
Wow! Fifty-two million wind bags! I knew a lot of people in the automotive industry were full of shit – they’re always gassing on about one thing or another – , but who knew the problem was this big? Absolutely, recall them all, maybe we’d start getting some real answers rather than all the … what? Huh. Airbags, not wind bags? You’re sure? Well, that’s very different. Never mind.
We can talk numbers and percentages, but I think the important point to take away here is few people care until it affects them directly.
Suddenly functionally becoming a caretaker of six kids because mom got killed by an airbag sucks in an extreme way I personally cannot fathom. All for minor cost savings that likely didn’t materially affect what you paid for a vehicle, and didn’t materially help the employee paychecks at the supplier or the integrating OEM. Just moved the margin needle a bit.
I say this as someone whose job is focused on margin analysis. All my coworkers in the tech teams appreciate that I don’t chase crap that makes their job or customer experience worse.
I was part of a group that worked with the NHTSA to enact a safety recall for AWD DSM cars back in the 90s. The numbers there were probably even smaller but we were successful.
Yeah, ole Steve can sit the fuck back down with that bullshit. It’s not the percentage of the cars but the severity of the potential injuries. If your shit is KILLING people you need to recall it no matter how many there are. Next time be a little more careful in your manufacturing process. I guarantee at least one engineer mentioned this possibility during the design or manufacturing stages and was ignored. Maybe listen to your engineers next time Steve.
So much this. If you make a safety device, there shouldn’t be any probability of injury. It’s a basic requirement of a safety device, IMHO.
Yeah well, a bomb in front of the driver will always have a probability of injury. Even airbags that are working correctly frequently injure and occasionally kill people.
Yeah well, a bomb in front of the driver will always have a probability of injury. Even airbags that are working correctly frequently injure and occasionally kill people.
Seems like the only company that made airbags that aren’t suspect are Autoliv…which is too bad as they inherited Delphi’s problems.
The Takata airbags killed 27 people and injured over 400. I’m not sure where I stand on this recall as I do like safety precautions. This current failure rate seems far less dramatic.
NHTSA is absolutely right in providing this context, and I am glad they did. The number of vehicles with a potential problem is far less useful than the number of instances the problem could have occurred. But 7 instances out of 2.6 million is still incredibly low, even when the consequence is this severe.
As a couple of commenters have said, ensuring we have good seat belts and other passive safety features (and people use them, instead of defeating them) would mean we could have lower-impact airbags or even no airbags. That’d reduce these sorts of recalls.
From the NHTSA report, ARC had an awareness of the slag manufacturing defects, and corrected their processes in 2018 by adding borescope inspection for presence of the slag.
Yet they are arguing the failure rate is too small to require addressing – even though they added a secondary process to inspect for the issue? That doesn’t sound great.
that info changes my views here for sure.
I wonder how ARC could have concluded in 2018 that the defect did not create a safety risk. Seems likely this should have been reported by then.
“$43k delivered. I mean, that’s a smoking deal.” for an appliance car that has very little character and has been the same for many moons, you kind of have to wonder what is so smoking about the deal, other than maybe not overpaying as much as the previous buyers. Or maybe there was just a lot of smoking the wacky tobacky before writing that?
Absolutely a case of price anchoring. Tell people that the car is a $55k car for a bit, wait until that feels normal (and hope people compare it against vehicles around that price), then drop the price and it looks like a deal compared to the previous price and the vehicles that are still that expensive, even if it might be more accurate to compare it to other appliance vehicles.
Also, though, we’ve become accustomed to ever-increasing prices of things, so seeing something decrease in price is a little bit of a shock regardless.
European-market airbags are smaller and deploy with less force because they assume the driver is wearing a seat belt, while the opposite is true over here.
Maybe it’s time to join the UNECE standards
Designing for both belted and unbelted occupants is stupid. As the Japanese say, the dog that chases two hares catches none.
I vote that if you are not wearing your seat belt, the airbag doesn’t deploy. If you can’t take the minimum of effort to protect yourself in the event of an accident by using your seat belt, then fly through the windshield like Superman.
Yeah designing airbags to account for people not wearing their seatbelts is idiotic, if someone has decided not to wear their seatbelt who cares if it’s the airbag or the flying out the windshield that injures or kills them, they already made it clear they don’t care about their own safety.
“But, but! What if I crash into a river? I could drown because that stupid belt holds me in!,”
-silly 16yo I taught how to maintain his car. Still irks me. But, I guess all my scare stories about child support (and buying him condoms back then) worked, because he still hasn’t spawned almost 15 years later. Yay
Haha US market airbags were originally designed only for people without seatbelts. That’s why for a few years they required auto seatbelts OR an airbag; they were considered equally valid solutions to the problem of people not wearing seatbelts
Airbag mandates should be rescinded. If cars going forward are built with safety harnesses, race-spec roll cages, and the airbags deleted, with a reduction in mass to go with it and properly designed crushable substructures, it is arguable that they could end up safer than the cars currently sold.
Racecars go without them for an assortment of reasons, and it is often the case that someone can crash on a race track at 150+ mph and walk away without injury, no airbags needed. In a modern car, this would still be a death sentence or at least inviting permanent disfigurement and/or disability. This change won’t be kind toward the “safety” of greatly heavier vehicles that have more kinetic energy to dissipate during a wreck, but those vehicles already greatly compromise the safety of pedestrians and cyclists as it is.
Sarcasm?
Physics. Airbags are used to reduce the impulse experienced by vehicle occupants. But there are other more effective ways to do this, which are rendered difficult to impossible by the current massive vehicles sold.
Many of the current rules, such as mandating “safety glass” for windows/windshields, are written under the assumption that an occupant may not be wearing a seatbelt. The rules aren’t entirely about safety. Airbags, for the safety improvements offered, also compromise the ultimate safety possible, as they are a potential source of injury or death themselves.
Racecar drivers also wear Nomex suits, helmets, and have 5-point harnesses and HANS devices. I agree that modern cars are way too big but there is a reason most people recommend against driving roll cage equipped cars on the street.
Roll cages can be padded, just as modern cars use interior trip to prevent the sharp metal underneath from causing injury. 5-point harnesses are IMO greatly superior to seatbelts, and will help prevent me from contacting sharp and/or hard steel pieces during a wreck. My GT6 is getting them.
For a 5-point harness to be effective, it has to be custom installed for the driver. If I’m driving around in a caged vehicle, what’s keeping my head safe? I’m not wearing a hans and helmet to go grocery shopping. Imagine having to add more interior volume to make sure my kids can’t whack their heads on the shoulder harness support bar if they slip getting out of the backseat, and say goodbye to coupes with a backseat entirely.
When I get sideswiped into a ditch and rolls my car, how am I going to get out of that? Imagine crawling through a cage to get your toddler out of the car everyday.
There are vehicles that will still benefit from them. Such as family haulers, wagons, trucks, and SUVs. It is enthusiasts’ vehicles and small subcompacts that will benefit greatly from no longer needing airbags. It would be nice to have a loophole where small mass-produced vehicles could be sold that don’t require them, because it would then be possible to design them in a way that they are safer to use when mixing with all of the road hippoes. Airbags pose restrictions on the dimensions of the vehicle itself, ultimately limiting how small they can get.
Honest question, do Kei cars have airbags? My 03 Civic sedan is about as small as I can go on a vehicle and still have it usable for 98% of my needs, and I have to borrow, rent a larger vehicle, or pay for delivery on the 2% cases it doesn’t.
I believe they do.
Their safety is also comparable to the standard size vehicles sold in Japan:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24499113/
I’m going to gently disagree. Impacting a “padded” roll cage with one’s bare noggin does only slightly less damage than head-butting a brick wall. One main reason we wear beefy helmets in the rally cars is that those roll cage bars do not give…at all. Half an inch of foam does not sufficiently dissipate your head’s momentum enough to avoid a serious head injury.
With an impact other than frontal, imagine how the occupants arms flail around in the cabin. Now, add the hardest, most inflexible object you can think of in a car cabin (roll cage bars), and imagine the potential damage from a body in a standard seat belt moving around in that space due to a wreck.
Roll cages do a fantastic job keeping crew alive and mostly unhurt in the rally cars where we usually see the wrecks coming. In my DD, I’ll keep the normal seat belt and airbag setup for when people hit me unexpectedly or from weird angles.
Roll cages do not weigh less than airbags. An airbag is 3-7 lbs, and modern cars have around 10 of them, so 50 lbs if we’re being generous. Premade roll cages have shipping weights between 120 and 250 lbs.
You’re probably right about roll cages and safety harnesses being superior in terms of safety, I’m just being pedantic about mass reduction.
I was referring to cutting mass in other areas of the car. The roll cage I’m putting in the GT6 is about 120 lbs.
Since we are talking about safety, does your GT6 have the infamous Triumph swingarm rear suspension?
It has Rotoflex, which is going to be swapped out with Toyota parts, because the Rotoflex couplings have a shelf life.
Wise choice. CV joints, I presume?
Oh, okay, that makes more sense.
While I understand what you’re getting at, there is a fundamental difference in the implementation of safety in race cars and road cars. The largest reason that 5-Point belts, roll cages, and HANS devices aren’t used in road cars is convenience and ease of use vs safety potential. Roll bars, while they can be padded, are an absolute death sentence if your head (or at speed even a helmeted head) contact them with nearly any force. The combination of harnesses, roll bars, and HANS devices with helmets all MUST work together in order to be effective.
In a road car, nobody but the most dedicated enthusiast is willing to strap on ALL of that gear (heck even a 5 point belt is a PITA compared to a regular seat belt) just to go 5 minutes down the road to Starbucks.
All of these systems in both race and road cars serve the same purpose, to slow your body (and head especially) over as long a time as possible. A roll cage without a helmet, even with a LOT of padding, will absolutely kill most people in a normal accident, while a large number of airbags, ie. Steering wheel, knees, door frame, etc, will allow any persons body to be slowed down gradually.
On top of this, safety systems in race cars are only built for one type of person, grown adults who are made to fit, while road cars have to accommodate every single type of person from Day 1 newborn to person on their deathbed, and there is no way to accommodate a car seat with a roll cage and infant helmets.
It’s for this reason that modern safety equipment is what it is, it can drastically increase survival rate for ALL people in ALL circumstances without requiring costly and intrusive safety gear.
yeah, i don’t follow motorsports, but from the pictures i’ve seen of drivers, aren’t they all NASA’s ideal: 16 hands and 9 stone?
On the high level professional level sure, but the same safety capabilities still extend to the grassroots level of fat, scrawny, super tall, uber short men and women, but most importantly they have safety gear tailored directly to them that fits them. Imagine the hell we’d live in if you had to spend 15+ minutes at the airport rental counter checking out a helmet, HANS device and seat belt straps for your rental because someone thought it was a better idea than having standard airbags.
Or, simply mandate that all new vehicles must be equipped with Tesla’s full self driving, since everyone knows that it is absolutely impossible to be in an accident with a car so equipped. No seatbelts, airbags, roll cages, front seats, or anything else needed ever again, just some cheap sensors and a computer, since car accidents will never happen again, not a single one.
That was hilarious. Take your upvote.
This only works if everyone is wearing a helmet and a HANS device too. That’s fine for individuals who want to set up their vehicles that way, but it does not make sense for the masses.
I agree that vehicles are obscenely large and heavy, but airbags are not the culprit for this and have an overwhelmingly positive effect on safety. I agree as others have mentioned that we need to stop requiring they be designed for unbelted occupants in the US. That is the smart play here.
Gosh who would have thought that placing an explosive device on the steering wheel and aiming it at the driver would possibly have negative effects?
7 out of 2.6 Million is frankly pretty good odds. Combine that with 3 per 100 vehicle annual accident rate and you have a pretty darn low chance of dying from an AutoLiv airbag. I would be much safer riding in that car than pretty much any car I own.
Agreed, the recall covers 52 million cars over 18 years and 108 million accidents. for 6 injuries, and 1 fatality. I think those stats are better than flying.
It’s a safety feature that killed people. Doesn’t really matter the likelihood at that point, as long as it’s higher than zero.
I understand that perfectly valid sentiment but there is a non-zero chance that swapping out all those air-bags will cause a malfunction or that the new ones will also have undetected flaws. From a statistical probability standpoint, it is probably best to roll with the proven but slightly imperfect units. Not to mention that it is incinerating billions of dollars and enriching lawyers.
I’m a lawyer and I see no problem with your final sentence. 🙂
Anyway, I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I was pretending to be one of the functional safety engineers I get to talk to every other day.