OK , enough is enough . It is time to allow people to disable their Air Bags that are on the recall list . I know that air bags can prevent a large percentage of injuries in a crash . But we should not have to drive around with a Hand Grenade right infront of us.
Many states let me ride a Motorcycle without a Helmet or even clothes that protect from road rash .
I am fine with that. Likely the only way that happens is if a federal law is passed to prevent the parties involved from being sued.
I’ll vote for that. Sure useful but put on over a million miles without them. Known hazard versus unknown. I think all it would take would be a temporary suspension of rules but it will never happen.
Yeah my 03 trailblazer never had a recall even though it had the bad takata part. I even asked the dealer if they could disconnect it. No way. Lucky the vehicle got rear ended no airbag deploy, This whole airbag problem is a never ending story, kind of like pearl white paint!
Vehicle owners aren’t allowed to disconnect the airbag? Reconnect the airbag before the annual inspection.
Is there a rule in Minnesota?
Never performed on mine and no planned action by GM.
Is your post prompted by the new NHTSA request to ARC Automotive to recall 67 million air bag inflators? I read about that in this morning’s newspaper. ARC contends that the inflator issues are manufacturing defects and not a design defect and there should not be a recall. IMO if there are enough manufacturing defects there should be a recall but I’m not familiar enough with this issue to know what to do.
If ARC is correct about the defect then disabling the airbags keeps well functioning air bags from doing their job. Two people were killed and seven injured due to ARC inflator explosions among the millions of inflators deployed. I realize that only a few inflators deployed, but disabling them might kill you too.
What’s the reason behind the problems with the Airbags? I can understand that even after extensive research and diligent testing that things an happen. But far too many times it’s because the manufacturer was taking shortcuts that could have easily been prevented. Were they following “Best Practices”?
I don’t know the reason for the latest recall but General Motors has issued 1 million or so .
People say that your chance of injury by a deffective air bag is small . Well , that is not much comfort to those that are injured .
The containment vessel is designed with features to control the deployment of the bag. Kind of like the pull off lids on food cans or the soda can opening tabs. It appears many manufacturers copied the same basic design approach.
Earlier, they attributed the deployment anomalies to degradation of the parts in certain environmental conditions. The containment vessel is supposed to open along certain relief lines but just fold back on others to keep the segments that open from flying off. Those fold lines get weakened and the part becomes a projectile.
Seems to me they can control the corrosion aspect by choosing a more stable metal or post machining coating it in some way. This explanation has always been troubling for me to accept.
Alternatively, the design may be inherently difficult to reliably reproduce. In other words the margin of error is very small. To press in a relief line that intentionally separates versus one that folds may be very difficult to achieve. In those situations, the manufacturing process usually includes an expensive quality inspection step that involves empirically testing a small subset of the produced parts to ensure they perform as expected. There is yield cost associated with the production testing and likely fall out. Manufacturers may be tempted to forego that testing…
I didn’t know that. Would deliberately crashing the car to deploy the airbags be a loophole? The number of people who would do this paper work before removing the fuse for the airbag must be very few.
But remember that in many cars with seat belt load limiters, the seat belts alone without the airbag are only strong enough to protect an adult man in a crash that is less than about 30 MPH in to a fixed barrier. I don’t think the seat belts in a non airbag equipped car today have load limiters.
Thanks for clarifying the agency and procedure for having an air bag shut off. Many of us would not attempt a diy disconnect but would prefer a dealer do it. Like I said though adding a single paragraph on acceptable reasons to approve a shut off to include bags under recall would seem easy to do. So drilling down to the real impact, 1400 lives saved a year, and a small percentage of folks that would turn them off, it is not a particular high risk issue. Particularly if these folks just drove more cautiously until the faulty bags can be replaced.
Even driving as caeful as you can will not stop someone from running a Stop Sign right in front of you .
My previous car was a 99 Monte Carlo. I had the steering wheel off many times to fix ignition switch, horn system, etc. The first item in the manual is pull the airbag fuse.
If you pull the fuse and get in a wreck, it’s on you. The insurance company would have something to say about said pulled fuse.
Yeah I had a young girl do that to me. Sailed right through the stop sign then honked and gave me the universal salute. I stopped for her though. I practice no contact driving.
My wife is a country girl so in the big city I used to tell her you have to be ready for things like cars flying off the overpass. She always laughed at me. Then one day it happened. We were miles
away but I rested my case. What are the odds though? Like said, a crash requires two people making a mistake at the same time. Only one mistake, no problem.
Really Bing? First “crash” I was involved in: two lane bridge, there was a fender bender on the bridge, I was stopped waiting for the accident site to clear, was reared ended by another vehicle, what did I do wrong?
Another crash, traveling on a two lane road, doing the speed limit. A van ran a stop sign, hit my car on the drivers side door with sufficient force that I ended up with a broken rib and other lacerations and contusions, car was totaled, what did I do wrong?
+1 to Purebred’s comments/question.
Yes, driver error is the major cause of crashes, and when two drivers make a mistake, the chance of a collision increases to the point of being definite–in almost every case.
But, when my brother was T-boned by someone who ran a stop sign, what could my brother have done to avoid the crash that totaled my father’s beautiful '66 Ford Galaxie 500?
When my friend (with me as a passenger) had just pulled away from the gas pump, and was in the process of leaving a Shell station, what could he have done differently to avoid a wacko woman driver who veered off of Route 1, careened at high speed onto the Shell station’s property, and T-boned his Honda Accord?
I’ve been rear-ended twice (several years apart) while waiting at a red light. My brother was driving east bound on a highway when a drunk driver crossed the median. My brother did everything he could to avoid getting hit by this drunk. Narrowly missed a direct head-on collision, but the drunk still hit the side of his car and sent him spinning. Brother had some injuries and needed surgery. The drunk walked away without a scratch. From my personal observations…it’s usually ONE person driving recklessly or not obeying traffic laws that cause MOST accidents.
Just to clarify, the original statement was simply to be allowed to legally and without liability issues to be able to shut off a recalled air bag, rather than risk a deadly spewing of metal shards if it deployed. Seems to me this is simple common sense and effective risk management that should be not only allowed, but promoted and encouraged.
It really had nothing to do with the effectiveness of air bags in a rear end collision, etc. the rest was just using their own surprising statistics to suggest the possible outcome. I found it surprising though that only an average of 1400 deaths per year have been saved from the deploying of air bags. I would have thought it to be in the tens of thousands per year from all of the hoopla over them. I’m sure many of you know people who have been saved by air bags. I personally only know of one couple that needed to go to the hospital from air bag injuries after hitting a deer. I have never had one deploy myself and have never been injured hitting a deer.
So it was just if your air bag is recalled, it should be sop to go to the dealer and have it shut off until it can be replaced. Depending on the wishes of the citizen of course.
