Honda airbags that impale you with shards of metal

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/31/honda.recall/index.html

 

Maybe you should Shut your eyes upon impact? ;-)

Also, remember to put your hands at 9:00 and 3:00.
If you put your hands at the old 10-2 and the airbag
fires off it has happened that the driver's thumbs were broken!

Hands now go at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock if you drive with airbags.

 

The USA remains the only country in the world that has a wacky legal
requirement that bombs be installed in car's interior, aimed directly at
the occupants. Then they require that big yellow labels be stuck
everywhere, warning you that the bombs will kill your kids so make sure you
put the little dears where the bombs can't reach them. Sheesh.

For those of you in Canada, bomb disablement is quite legal, and is
available at any garage for about $40 (don't know if that's per bomb or an
all-in price).

Do you know what detonates the bombs? Sodium azide, the same stuff they use
to light off high-explosives. Auto dealership technicians have fun
detonating surplus airbags in the parking lot. Sometimes they try to see
how high the bags will go when ignited, which can be up to forty feet. Fun,
wow!

 

And yet only Honda seems to have decided to make them *shrapnel*
bombs...

 

Crunchy frog, anyone? Have to keep those Monty Python episodes away
from Honda designers.

Dave

 

You could take the bones out... ;^)

 

Urban myth. The energy isn't enough to do more than remove your hands
from the wheel.

9 and 3 because you have much greater control. And shuffle steer.
Although I have always driven my race cars "hands on" because you can
"lose" them. Now I drive my Fit that way at speeds greater than about
6 mph to keep the fingers on the paddles.

 

what he said

must be all those conscientious objectors we sent them!

J.

 

I was told that insurance companies up here have mixed feelings about
airbags. Bags are very expensive to replace after a collision, and there's
often collateral damage when the bags break windshields and damage
interiors, plus they cause a lot of minor (and sometimes not so minor)
injuries when they deploy. All that's very expensive for the insurance
companies.

Up here there are neither rewards for having airbags nor penalties for
disabling them.

 

My wife's low speed accident resulted in some surprising structural
damage, but a goodly chunk went to replacing the bags, seatbelts,
pretnesioners and front windshield, which was totalled on the pax side
but not the driver's side, which the body shop said is quite typical
of airbag deployment.

Technically, you're supposed to replace the bags every ten years.
Yeah, sure. If you've done so, please leave a twenty under your front
door mat. I'll be by tomorrow to replace it with two tens.

 

One of my son's friends ran into a parked car...not much body damage,
but the bags on both sides deployed. The insurance co. totalled the
car based on the cost of replacing the airbags, the windshield, as
well as the body damage.

I saw the car...would have been an easy fix as far as the actual crash
damage...oh, well...

 

(this is also a reply to J.L.Hemmer's post)

There are a couple of wrecking yards not far from my house. I regularly see
trailers loaded with late-model wrecked cars going there.

What I've noticed the last ten years or so is that most of those late-model
cars being taken to the wreckers appear to have very little body damage, at
least much less body damage than what I used to see in years past.

I wonder if the cost of fixing SRS systems is resulting in far more
vehicles being "totalled" with damage that would have been considered
relatively cheap to repair before airbags came along?

 

Can I buy a new Honda in Canada,
have the bombs removed, even get a few
bucks for them, and drive the car legally
for registration in California?

Or are prices higher in Canada for whatever reason,
or other complication?

J.

 

///snipped///

In a word. NO! While it is not illegal to remove the bombs in Canada, it is
in the US, I believe, and I am sure that California, based on that state's
past record, will not register such a modified car....I would check the laws
in Ca and the Feds before doing such.

DaveD

 

A new vehicle cannot be imported into the US without a present and
functioning SRS system.

California's rules don't come into play until Federal NHTSA regs are
satisfied.
<http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/import/>

 

It isnt technically a new vehicle if it was bought in Canada.

 

OK, then let me be more precise: A vehicle manufactured after about 1988
(not certain of exact year) for the non-US market may not be imported into
the US for the purpose of US registration without a complete and
functioning SRS system.

 

This is technically correct. The last I read, permission must be obtained
in writing from the NHTSA.

Permission is predicated upon the presence of some definite and specific
factor that would, in the opinion of the NHTSA's bureacrats, place the
applicant in some special danger from airbags that ordinary people would
not face. These factors would include advanced age, unusually small adult
body size, or some sort of physical infirmity, such as advanced
osteoporosis.

I imagine the number of officially-permitted SRS disablements must be
vanishingly tiny.

 

In the US you can get federal permission to disable airbags; I'm not sure
what the requirements are or whether they've even been formalized.

A car that came equipped with airbags cannot legally be driven in the US
if they've been removed. However, disabling them (or getting an 'off'
switch wired in) does not make the car illegal to drive. Go ahead and
drive to Canada to have the operation performed; California doesn't even
have to know you did it.

 

Correct. More specificaly, it must meet all safety and emmissions
requirements present at the time of its manufactor. If a car is being
brought into the US "for off-road use only", a bond has to be posted.
Mssrs Gates, Leno and Ellison have multiple cars that fall under this
law, as do/did every Formula One team.