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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

Looks interesting, the front trunk and cut-down "UI" look especially great. This looks like an EV you could actually work on in your garage.

Vaporware until they get a production line though, and the absence of airbag is somewhat worrying when it advertises a top speed of 127mph and 0-60 in 4.5, at a GVWR 10klbs it's outside the light truck regs (8.5klbs GVWR) and thus doesn't require them but still...

Of note, the Verge article is light on useful pictures, there are other sites with interesting pics especially of the interior: http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1111790_bollinger-b1-the-...

And while it has the same dimensions as a Wrangler it avertises 2~3 times the curb weight and towing capacity and almost twice the cargo volume (rear seats stowed). And the maximum ground clearance is pretty ridiculous as well (advertised as adjustable from 10 to 20, most trucks seem to be between 8 and 12)

View on HN

The most amazing thing is the photo of the lumber where a hole underneath the dash is revealed allowing the hauling of lumber the entire length of the vehicle. That is an impressive amount of utility right there. Whether quirky features like that would survive the process towards production remain to be seen, but this is certainly an interesting take on a truck that could be very useful in rural America.

A Tesla model S fits 10' lengths of lumber. Just protect the dashboard from scuffing with a blanket.

Well that's certainly good to know.

Basically any midsize-and-up with hatchback-style fold-down rear seats (even non-hatchbacks with fixed rear dashes) will accommodate such lumber. Some would require the removal of the passenger seat headrest.

According to its spec sheet, the B1 has 12ft between the front and rear liftgates when they're closed, the car is 12.5ft long. The Model S is almost 4ft (and 30%) longer.

I once saw a Mazda Miata with 16' 2x8s. They were in the passenger seat, seat reclined. One end in the foot well and the other high in the air. They rested on the little roll bar and were strapped down nicely. Utility is what you make of it.

Yesterday I was at the local recycling centre and spotted an older gentleman dropping off garden waste (big black bags of branches, hedge trimmings etc.) with his mint condition ~1999 Peugeot 306 convertible. I bet he was the original owner too.

(For non-Europeans, link: http://petrolblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Peugeot-306... )

I have an 8 foot utility trailer that I tow with my Honda Fit. I overloaded it once on accident with 2500lbs of roofing materials. The capacity is 2000lbs. I frequently load it up with long and heavy stuff, and I don't risk ruining my interior. It does 95% of what most people do with a truck, but I can still drive to work on Monday or take it on a long road trip and get 35mpg. Started with a $300 Harbor Freight trailer and added sides and floor to it. I guess my point is that you can pretty much haul whatever you need to with damn near any car on the market.

Just don't tell the service people if your car is still under warranty -- most North American non-truck vehicles are not rated for towing _at all_ even when their European counterparts are. This includes most so-called "crossovers" and small SUVs. Something as big as a Chevy Equinox (which is larger than the Isuzu Trooper we had in the 80s, which my family thought was massive for the time) is not rated for towing until you go up to the biggest engine and AWD.

Americans seem to love^H^H^H^Hdemand huge vehicles, but those huge vehicles rarely have the clearance and towing capacity to actually be "utility" despite being advertised that way :-(

most North American non-truck vehicles are not rated for towing _at all_

Not just that, but his $300 trailer probably doesn't have brakes. It's lunacy to tow 2500 unbraked pounds behind a Honda Fit.

Any idea as to why is this different from the EU? My 2006 Ford Focus C-max van pull up to 1200 kg (= 2650 pound, braked, 665 kg unbraked) legally here.

665 kg unbraked

That works out to 1466 pounds. The guy was towing 2500 pounds with a Honda Fit that (unless it's a hybrid) weighs less than 2400 lbs for the car itself.

Do you think the Fit's brakes are designed to safely stop 2x the design weight? Plus the stability just wouldn't be there. Plus any appreciable "tongue weight" behind the back wheels will make the front end light. Bad for control. Wikipedia touches on the issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towing#Towing_safety

Here's another counterexample. The Porsche Cayenne can tow 7716 pounds (3500 kilos) braked, but only 1653 pounds (750 kilos) unbraked. And it's a vehicle that weighs twice as much as the subcompact Fit: http://www.porsche.com/usa/models/cayenne/cayenne-models/cay...

Your C-Max is 1.4~1.5t (depending on model) pulling 1.2t braked or 0.66t unbraked so you can pull ~45% of your car's weight unbraked, ~80% braked.

The Fit is 1t and was pulling 1.1t unbraked, 110% of its weight.

I always assumed it was just a combination of regulatory body idiocy and caution on the side of car manufaturers. So I didn't feel bad putting a hitch on my diesel Jetta and towing a trailer with it because it was rated for at least 2500 lbs in Europe.

But a friend who is more auto-literate looked into it and said in Europe the way trailers are positioned is different somehow such that the weight on the hitch is different.

Also more aggressive speed limits on trailers and other safety regulations enforced on the drivers.

So I don't know, it might actually be partially legitimate.

It's cool but it's kind of a gimmick. You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack. Many cars with fold down rear seats can fit 8' lumber too.

Yeah, but now with a roof rack and this thing you can haul twice as much! or perhaps just slightly more than you could otherwise

Not to mention that if you're in a rain/snow/sleet/hail/etc. storm and you need to keep your lumber (or some other very long moisture-sensitive thing, like one of those absurdly-long sub sandwiches) dry or otherwise protected while hauling it, you can now do so.

wrap it in a tarp?

I always wrap absurdly-long submarine sandwiches in a tarp. Even in the dry season in Cali.

> You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack. Many cars with fold down rear seats can fit 8' lumber too.

The B1 can fit 12' with the liftgates closed.

You could haul lumber in a jeep as well - fold down the front window (why people forget about this, I don't know), prop the lumber between the seats resting on the dash, tailgate, etc - tie it down.

> You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.

-You can easily haul very limited quantities of lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.

I've tried once to put the maximum legal (well, in Norway, at any rate) weight of 200kg/450lbs on my Land Cruiser's roof rack, just to see how it affected handling.

I've only felt more nervous in a car once, and that was in a Congolese taxi seemingly bent on having a go on the sound barrier. In the dark. With no lights.

The body roll was extreme, and any bump in the road led to damped oscillations like you wouldn't believe. After a bit of trial and error, I found that slightly less than half the max allowable weight was about as much as the vehicle could take and still be somewhat drivable.

Come to think of it, an estate wagon of some sort would probably be better for hauling stuff on the roof - sits much, much lower.

Pretty sad for something called a "Land Rover."

Re: what you said about wagons, I think the Subaru Outback is actually the most practical ICE vehicle out there. Pretty high clearance, very powerful engine, great towing capacity, good roof rack options, ample trunk space, and low centre of gravity.

I just wish they made one with an electric motor and a plug.

I think that you're confusing "Land Rover" and "Land Cruiser".

Land Rover vehicles are made by Jaguar Land Rover. The term "Land Rover" usually refers to either the Land Rover Defender (a bulky, tractor-looking SUV that isn't legal in the USA* due to a lack of safety features and emissions controls) or a variety of luxury SUVs that are remarkably good off-road but suffer from questionable reliability.

Land Cruisers are made by Toyota. The term "Land Cruiser" can refer to two totally separate Toyota vehicles. The J20, J40, and J70 models are known for being incredibly sturdy, reliable, and versatile vehicles, while the J50, J60, J80, J100, and J200 models are luxury SUVs; the J200 has a base MSRP of USD$86,000. Toyota doesn't sell the rugged, non-luxury models in the USA, although unlike in the case of the Land Rover Defender this may be more due to market analysis than legality.

There's no way to know from the original comment whether they were driving a rugged Land Cruiser or a luxury Land Cruiser. I've never driven either of them, but I'm sure that they behave very differently.

*Yes, I know that the person who commented specified that they were in Norway. I'm just adding the bit about Land Rovers not being legal in the USA (with a few exceptions) so that Americans like myself won't be scratching their heads trying to remember what Defenders look like :-)

For any Americans who are now curious, what Land Rover Defenders look like is.. kind of like the Bollinger B1 :)

Defenders aren't legal in the USA? I have been a scofflaw for the last ten years?

Sorry, you're totally wrong about that. Rest-of-world (ROW) Defenders are absolutely legal in the US, as are any vehicle > 25 years old with original spec motor. Also legal are North American Spec (NAS) Defenders, which were imported for three years in the 90s.

Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com

That's why I said "with a few exceptions". There are legal Defenders in the USA, but they are uncommon enough that I didn't want people thinking of Discoveries or LR2/3/4's when I described a "tractor-like" vehicle. Next time I'll be more specific.

P.S. That's a neat site! I'm glad that there's an American Defender community. Defenders are beautiful vehicles, and on the rare occasions that I see one I always try to get a picture with it :-)

I was in a J95 - in some markets called the Prado. (Basically less rugged than the 70 series, but still at the fairly utilitarian end of the range - a close relative of the J80 - beam axle at the rear, independent up front, lockers rear&center.)

It is more a matter of physics than utilitarian/luxury, I suspect - 4x4s ride tall (my roof rack is 6'8" above ground), so to behave properly with a significant load on the roof, you'd need lots of mass to keep the centre of gravity low while also requiring suspension stiff enough to be unusable to keep the roll in check.

Being able to utilize existing liquid fuel infrastructure is much more useful in rural America.

Not necessarily for a vehicle that just tools around the farm, although admittedly I doubt you'd buy one of these at 60k to not leave your property.

In a farm/preserve/etc scenario with a big diesel tank for the implements, a large diesel genset to recharge the EVs might be workable and leverage that infrastructure. Fleets of these could probably be charged off a fixed genset (not datacenter scale, but up there), which might be useful in remote scenarios or where it is tough to deliver a lot of mains electricity. I don’t know how emissions would work out (is a genset better than multiple portable engines?) and it’d be obviously less efficient than just doing the combustion in the vehicles, but it is something that came to mind when you mentioned that which might be useful for this type of vehicle.

Even if it’s a little worse in terms of the math, electric utility vehicles are strongly appealing due to their torque characteristics and fewer parts which always seem to be the ones you forgot spares of and such. With passenger sedans you’re playing the efficiency game, but with off-road, utility, industrial, and so on, there is more to think about when considering EV. Might not be that weird. (I’m a Wrangler owner who reads about electric conversions constantly — look at South Korean work on Jeeps — and I completely get where Bollinger is coming from.)

Minority view: I dislike airbags. If it were legal - which it is not where I live - I would have them out of my car today.

The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head.

[Edit: typo]

I agree, to an extent. In some crash scenarios, an airbag is useful. In others, it's actually more harmful than good.

I reckon what's more useful than an airbag in all situations, though, is a good restraint system.

That's why airbag control systems are programmed to only activate in crash scenarios where they do more good than harm. It's not as if all 10 airbags will instantly inflate in every possible crash.

> I reckon...

Good thing we have solid engineering and scientific studies proving the safety then.

And do any of those studies contradict what I wrote? I reckon not, though I'd be happy to stand corrected and be reassured that the airbag sitting in front of me when I'm driving will always be perfectly safe to use/deploy.

An airbag is a supplementary restraint system. It does not replace or take precedence over the primary restraint system (a.k.a. the seat belt). That's what I meant when I reckoned it to be less critical; the airbag does you little good (and in fact is a heck of a lot more dangerous) if you're not wearing a seat belt.

Now, if this truck didn't even have seatbelts, then I'd be a lot more worried.

I agree. They also are the reason most cars now involved in an collision where one goes off are totaled. We're a lot safer, with respect to potential fatality level crashes, but minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.

why does it need to be totaled?

"Totaled" is just a term of art in the insurance industry. It means that the cost to restore the vehicle is greater than its as-repaired street value. It doesn't mean that the vehicle has to be destroyed; it just means the insurer will only give you the fair market value of the vehicle as though you sold it used immediately before the accident, instead of paying for it to be repaired.

The problem, though, is that when an insurance company does that, it colors the title of the vehicle (e.g. "salvage title"), which makes it harder to sell and reduces its resale value.

But doesn't the vehicle become the property of the insurance company after the payout?

No, you generally can buy it back for the scrap value.

But that means the answer to the question as posed is "yes".

Yes.

They in turn sell it, where one of two things happens.

* It is parted out for spares for other cars.

* Someone actually repairs and resells it. This is one of the things you have to look out for when buying a used car. It may not be difficult to repair it cosmetically, but crumple zones are one use only.

Because resetting the airbags can cost several thousands of dollars.

Two deployed airbags in a moderate (but not life threatening) crash likely cost $1000 each to replace, in addition to whatever other damage has been done to the vehicle.

Which is considerably cheaper than the medical costs incurred by bouncing your face off the dashboard.

And vastly greater than the cost of adding airbags to the car at production time.

First, actually adding airbags does not add thousands of dollars to the cost of a car. Hundreds, maybe.

Second, I will gladly pay extra for such a highly effective safety feature.

Third, I'm quite certain the medical costs saved by airbags every year will more than offset the cost of installing them on every new car. And that's just cold calculation, without bringing the moral value into it.

I hope you don't think I am anti airbags, I'm not.

> minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.

It's worth noting that a lot of this is due to massively improved crumple zone technology - older cars have smaller and sturdier crumple zones, meaning the cars drive away from accidents more intact (although the human being inside might be pretty messed up). New cars take much more damage in relatively small accidents to disperse as much energy as possible. Bad for resale value, but good for human survival.

It's not really the amount of energy dispersed, it's the time it takes it to happen.

It's usually the kinetic energy of the body that needs to be dissipated, modestly increasing the time it takes that to happen dramatically decreases the forces involved.

  I've got good news and bad news.

  OK, give me the bad news.

  He's dead, Jim.

  What's the good news?

  The insurance company didnt total the car!

Maybe wear your seatbelt next time.

My family had a car that was once very lightly rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. No major marks or scuffing on the back bumper so my mom just drove away. Three months later, while driving on the highway, she drove into a pot hole that triggered the airbags. The airbags exploded (yes they explode) completely unexpectedly while driving at 70 mph. Thankfully she was not hurt but the experience definitely shook her. Apparently the airbags' trigger had been triggered halfway when the car had been rear-ended.

Is there any way this can be checked as a part of routine maintenance at a mechanic? It sounds like it should be a standard part of the various state inspections.

Most independent shops won't touch airbags. Too much liability. Generally only dealer will service them.

I just have to ask, how do you know that the two incidents are related? The airbags may have deployed when she hit that pothole regardless of the rear-ender. Especially considering that a rear-ender would not trigger an airbag deployment, because that force is in the opposite direction of what an airbag is designed to protect you from.

Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.

I drove cars without airbags for most of my life. I even still have a car without airbags. Whether it's a good idea or not is debatable, but your statement that it's dangerous doesn't resonate with me. Airbags are a false sense of security and may or may not help you and were originally devised as a way to help drivers who don't use their seat belts. Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up, however. In the past, airbags have injured drivers and can go off unexpectedly (and even killed people when doing so).

survivorship bias. Yes, airbags can have faults that can cause injury. But having them is still safer than not having them. Just because you survived in a car without airbags and some other individual (even many) got injured or killed by an airbag is not evidence that people in general are safer without airbags. You need to assess risk/benefit based on a statistically valid sample size.

The statistics are pretty easily google-able so I'll only bother linking one article here: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5410761/ns/us_news/t/around-saved-...

That's not to say we shouldn't work on safer airbags, especially for children, or hold manufacturers accountable for faults/failures; of course we should. But saying cars are somehow safer without airbags flies in the face of the available evidence.

[edit] I realize you didn't explicitly say that airbags are not safe ('good idea or not is debatable', 'may or may not'), but you strongly imply that with 'Airbags are a false sense of security'.

"To get the rule, which was opposed by the auto industry because it would add cost to vehicles, Dole promised it would be rescinded if states that accounted for two-thirds of the population passed laws requiring seat belt use."

First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to think we are at 2/3 of the population.

The claim as phrased is somewhat suspicious, since it's a regulatory rule and the industry had no firm ability to prevent the department from issuing the regulation (they could lobby against it, or try to get allies in Congress to exercise a legislative veto.) Such a promise may have been a political effort to soften the blow, but I don't see any argument that, even if she was morally obligated to follow through on the promise while she was Secretary, it would be even morally binding on a later Secretary, especially in a different administration. And, legally, if the condition isn't in the regulation or somewhere else legally binding, a politicians promise of repeal is meaningless.

> Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up

That's not the case (emphasis on the "way up" part). The average new car price is over $33,000 in the US. Airbags, including side curtains, are a trivial portion of that cost. Even if you averaged it all out by including all airbag deployments and the cost to replace them, you're talking about a net 1%-2% of the cost of a new vehicle's purchase price (much less if we were to count the total expenditures across the lifetime of the vehicle, including fuel and routine maintenance).

"NHTSA estimates that when side curtain airbags become standard to meet the new side impact regulations in 2013, the airbags will add about $33 to the overall cost of the vehicle. Side curtains are slightly more expensive from OEM suppliers than traditional chest airbags (which cost about $50 apiece, on average) [source: Automotive News]"

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regu...

I wonder how many more wrecks happen due to the reduction of visibility caused by extra wide columns needed to fit the side curtains.

The need for the side columns to have a degree of strength is a bigger problem for visibility that the bulk added by side curtains. Driving '60 and 70's cars was great for visibility due to the amount of glass and narrow pillars. The risk of dying in a relatively low speed accident was less ideal.

My girlfriend's 2006? Subaru Legacy had thinner columns than her 2013 model. Not sure by how much, but it was very noticeable at first and I still find I sometimes miss seeing things in the new car that I never had a problem with in the old one. Maybe they are wider now for strength and side air bags. In any case, maximizing cars for crash-test-dummy preservation may not minimize for human harm due to car accidents. With automatic cars this may be not be a very big problem, but they are still a ways off, I think.

Well, when back over accidents became more common because the safety arms race gave vehicles rear visibility only slightly better than a Panzer the government mandated backup cameras.

Self driving cars will probably take over before "front blind spot detection" becomes a thing.

People drove around in cars with no seat belts, solid dashboards, craptastic drum brakes, and other great features along those lines, and most of them survived. The cars were still outrageously dangerous.

They weren't outrageously dangerous.

Russian Roulette is outrageously dangerous.

Old cars are just ever-so-slightly more dangerous than new cars.

Deaths per passenger-mile in the 1960s were about 5x greater than they are today. Traffic fatalities made up about 2.5% of all deaths at the time, even though people drove far less than they do now. I'm quite happy to call that "outrageous."

Are those numbers adjusted for alcohol consumption and how difficult it is for young people to get their licenses? T

There's a reason your age is the biggest factor in your car insurance premium.

Making it statistically less likely for a car full of drunk teenagers to go off a cliff on their way to prom affects road fatality statistics the same way decreases in infant mortality increases life expectancy.

The primary reduction in traffic fatalities is due to keeping "undesirable people" off the roads, increases in vehicle performance (modern cars can stop on and turn a relative dime compared to cars from decades ago)that turn many accidents into close calls.

Chasing safety is a lot like fuel economy. It's a steady march of small improvements all of which are compromises. I and many other people don't want to be injured in a likely accident scenario for a small reduction in the likelihood of death in an unlikely accident scenario. I also don't want the spare tire of my SUV under the trunk floor where I can't access it without removing cargo just to get .01 extra mpg.

Are deaths per passenger-mile in 60-year-old cars still 5x greater than deaths per passenger-mile in modern cars?

I assume you're trying to call attention to confounding factors like improved medical care. That's really tough to answer, because 60-year-old cars today aren't driven the way they were when they were new, and they're benefitting from modern tires and brake materials.

I'm sure there are analyses out there of the probability of serious injury or death in various crash scenarios in various types of cars.

Seatbelt with no airbag is still better than no seatbelt.

Also, I think the shoulder belt brake tends to work better than you imply (I had a big scratch when I collided with someone that crossed the centerline, I didn't hit my face on anything, despite the lack of airbags).

You've got it backwards. "Without a belt, air bags are of slight benefit".[0] Airbags are chiefly a nanny measure to protect people too stupid to fasten a seatbelt.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/26/us/study-shows-air-bags-sa...

What are you talking about? That article clearly says that air bags without seat belts are "of slight benefit", but are very effective when combined with seat belts.

There's a more comprehensive summary here: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

>Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.

have no idea why are you saying that. Probably you just _think_ so, and you've probably never been in a "relatively minor" accident, let alone in the accident where the car flies off the road and violently turns in every possible direction while flying and skidding upon landing. I was. Thanks God and Federal regulation authority for the seat belts mandate. Fixed by the seat belts it was like the scariest, very high-G, twists and turns, amusement park ride. Without the seat belts even the survival in that situation would hardly be possible, let alone avoiding heavy traumas and disability. The airbags didn't deploy for whatever reason.

Do you realize that it's your face that crashes into the airbag? It doesn't launch into you.

Also your car's engine is a series of constant explosions connected to a giant tank of gas.

The airbag significantly reduced the distance between your face and anything else. In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.

I'd rather have a sore neck from driving into a wall at 35mph than have a concussion from bouncing my face off of a bag full of high pressure gas.

Side curtain airbags are a much more useful technology than frontal ones.

Edit: Fire needs three things, fuel, oxygen and ignition. The atmosphere has oxygen. A gasoline vehicle keeps the fuel and ignition relatively far from each other. A battery contains both fuel and a source of ignition in close proximity. A punctured gas tank will not cause a fire every time. A punctured battery pack will cause a fire basically every time. In many cases a rusted out or leaking fuel system is noticed well before it starts a fire. There isn't much opportunity to notice a high-amperage short before it's a problem. Putting out a fire is even harder on electric vehicles. You can't throw foam and water on an internal short. There are many advantages of electric vehicles. Fire safety is not one of them.

> In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.

Great, then there's nothing to worry about... but if it is a serious crash, you'll wish you had an airbag to bounce off of rather than a hard steering column, dashboard and windshield.

Most people will never be in an airbag deploying crash in their lives. Of the minority that will very few will be in the kind of crash where a (frontal) airbag is what prevents them from serious harm.

If OEMs would just be less trigger happy with frontal airbag deployment then I'd be satisfied but the problem with that is that then you get the Concerned Mothers Association(TM) complaining about OEMs not doing everything they can to "save lives" and publicizing a few edge cases.

When I slammed into an oncoming left turning car at 50mph I was not wearing a seatbelt, my Subaru rolled completely over and the front airbag deployed. I left the accident with minor lacerations and no broken bones or major bruising. In 20 years of driving airbag equipped cars this has been my only experience of an airbag deployment. So far I'm a happy customer.

Wear your goddamn seatbelt.

You are an edge case.

But isn't spontaneous deployment of airbags causing grave injury also an edge case? [1]

Not only do I wear a seatbelt since that incident but I'm also, by orders of magnitude, a more conscientious driver than I was prior.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Spontaneous deployment, yes, that's an edge case.

Turning an accident that would have left one only bruised from the seatbelt into one that also includes a broken nose and injuries to one's hands and arms is fairly common.

"In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well."

That's not really a good thing. Having something to catch your head helps prevent neck injuries. In a high-speed crash, the forces involved could actually be debilitating and/or life-threatening.

Unless it's a Takata airbag and the thing that catches your face is a piece of metal shrapnel.

You do understand that airbags are bombs. The inflation mechanism literally uses explosives. They can and have killed people especially children and the elderly. Early generation airbags are more violent and dangerous because the standard was to protect an unbelted driver.

I believe this is still the standard in North America.

> They can and have killed people especially children and the elderly.

Who puts children in front of airbags?? The car is half-way covered in stickers saying not to.

Is a few lives saved in (rare) high speed accidents worth setting off explosions in people's faces and turning an otherwise minor accident into a trip to the hospital?

If all you care about are deaths per distance then you probably want the former. If you care about minimizing accidents that require any medical care reducing the number of small explosions near people's faces is the better bet. Someone else posted the a NYT link that's relevant.

This is for driver's frontal airbags only. Passenger airbags and side curtain airbags are less bad because people usually sit farther from the passenger airbag and there is less support in side impacts.

I have been in an accident with no air bag deployed and wearing my seat belt. I was rear-ended by a vehicle doing 45 mph faster than mine. I had torn ligaments in my neck that took years to fully recover from.

An air bag might have reduced my injury to a sore neck.

P.S. I was in a 1964 Chevrolet C10 Pickup that I had installed seat belts in.

Seriously?

An airbag isn't there to protect you from rear-endings. That's what headrests (which your '64 C10 did not have) are for.

My forehead and shoulders bounced off the steering wheel so hard that the left lens of my eyeglasses popped out. My mother, who was with me, didn't have her seat belt on. She was bounced so hard against the ceiling she was knocked unconscious.

The main problem with American air bags are that they have to (by law passed in 1984) be designed to work with people not wearing seat belts (unlike Europe)[1]. This means they more dangerous than European ones because they are bigger and must deploy much more explosively. This law is unlikely to be changed for many reasons with the most important one likely being that some car companies like expensive, unique requirements that segment markets and produce barriers to competition.

[1]http://carcynic.com/archives/00000006.html

> It doesn't launch into you.

Depends on the manufacturer of the airbags...so YMMV.

/I'm looking at you, Takata...

You seem to acknowledge that they increase safety, so why would you remove them? Are you that willing to let your emotions overpower your logic?

Actually, I said security, not safety. They are not quite the same. But yes, I certainly do not always discount emotive decisions. None of us do.

I always drive with a certain slight feeling of unease because of that explosively triggerable thing in front of me. I'd rather not. In no way do I wish to stop anybody else from having these devices in their vehicles - I just wish I weren't forced into having them myself.

For the record, I don't like the forced use of seatbelts either, even though personally, I wouldn't dream of ever driving one meter without them.

What's the difference between security and safety here? I assumed that was a typo/thinko because "security" in the context of cars would mean, to me, things like alarms and other anti-theft devices.

I just can't understand preferring an actual increased risk of death to a known-irrational feeling of unease.

To be fair, any crash above 70mph and the airbag might as well not exist.

A 70mph crash doesn't necessarily involve an unsurvivable impulse. Most accidents are not of the vehicle plows into immovable object sort.

Not true. If you weren't paying attention and crashed into a car slowing down somewhat gently in front of you then the crash could be rather prolonged and the airbag would be absolutely essential. If you crash into a brick wall going 70 mph that's a totally different situation.

This is simply not true. What causes damage and hurts or kills is rapid deceleration, not speed. Sure, speed is a necessary component in order to achieve the most violent deceleration but speed alone does guarantee damage at all.

The racing world proves this conclusively. Watch Formula 1 or NASCAR and you'll see 200 mph crashes where everyone walks away. Watch motorcycle racing and see guys fall of their bikes at all kinds of speeds and just glide on their backs until they stop, get up and walk away. I went off track at Willow Springs raceway doing 120 mph, no big deal.

You're right but your supporting evidence is applied wrong.

People survive crashes in racing regardless of speed not because the crashes typically take place over a long period of time but because they have a seat that fits them well, straps keeping them in it and heat restraints.

Also, going off track is not crashing.

You missed my point: Speed does not kill.

Going off track at 120 MPH was not fun. Dirt, rocks, slashed two tires. Beyond that it was uneventful. The speed just makes it last longer and probably contributed to the huge holes on the tires.

You can have a crash on the highway at 100 MPH and have it be just an uneventful other than a crunched-up car. It's a function of the delta in speed AND the delta in acceleration, angle, forces, etc. In other words, if the car in front of you is decelerating gently vs. violently, etc. Too many permutations to list.

What you don't want is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No7v2ps6ukI

It doesn't even look like they are travelling fast at all.

Its hard to argue against the logic that people travelling slower would reduce injury and harm. It's sure annoying to crawl along slowly, but it's also pretty hard to hurt yourself doing it.

Well, there's a limit, right? The point of a highway is to move people from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible. In other words, we need to optimize for both. If we optimize only for safety we'd crawl at 5 mph.

>You missed my point: Speed does not kill.

No, we're agreeing on that.

I'm saying that most of the benefit in a typical racing situation comes from seats and restraints. Look at some of the wrecks from the cup series race last weekend at Indianapolis. They're not walking away because the wreck took a long time. They're walking away because they weren't bouncing around inside.

The human body can survive plenty of G forces.

http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm

"Stapp'd endured 25 Gs. It was the equivalent of a Mach 1.6 ejection at 40,000 feet, a jolt in excess of that experienced by a driver who crashes into a red brick wall at over 120 miles per hour. Only it had lasted perhaps nine times longer. And it had burst nearly every capillary in Stapp's eyeballs. "

"Stapp had already proven what he'd set out to prove: that a pilot, if adequately protected, could survive a high speed, high altitude ejection"

Of course, restraints let the structure around you disintegrate without you being part of the spectacle.

Yet it is true that airbags have probably saved millions of lives as well as untold people from painful, expensive and life changing injuries.

There is no way I would buy a car without airbags. This is one reason I am not into vintage or collectible cars, they are simply not safe and I do not care to drive them.

> and head restraints.

What do you think an airbag's purpose is?

to cushion hit you hard if your unrestrained head happens to get close to the steering wheel but not as hard as the steering wheel itself would hit you.

Google "HANS device". That's a restraint.

Another name for air bags is "supplemental restraint system".

They control deceleration.

> to cushion hit you hard if your unrestrained head happens to get close to the steering wheel but not as hard as the steering wheel itself would hit you.

The belt does that unless you literally have a rubber neck.

The point of the airbag is to restrain your head so that it does not snap forward too fast and break your neck (heads are heavy, and necks were not built for sudden forward deceleration), that's why it needs to inflate so fast: it has to be fully inflated before you faceplant in it, so that it can slow down your head's forward movement, that's why it has vents and starts deflating as soon as it's fully inflated, and by the time you've stopped it is fully deflated.

If it were a cushion it would have no reason to deflate on its own and the deflation would not, in fact, make any sense at all.

> Google "HANS device". That's a restraint.

The HANS device is a better restraint, it is also a much more cumbersome one and requires wearing a helmet, nobody is going to wear a HANS in their while driving to the corner store.

Watch Formula 1 or NASCAR and you'll see 200 mph crashes where everyone walks away.

...and more interestingly, none of the cars have airbags. What they do have, however, are very tight restraints.

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