Does anybody believe these things really work towards SAVING people's lives?

A friend of my mother's called two days ago and told her while she was driving at 30 miles an hour on the highway, she hit a bump and heard a rifle shot go off next to her ear, it was the air bag exploding and it hit her so hard, almost her whole body is bruised and she could hardly even breathe even after she'd driven 2 miles to get off the main road and could pull over and see how bad the damage was. And they're putting these things into cars to HELP people? Every time I hear about air bags all I hear is the damage they can do to the passengers and now the driver, so what is the point of these things?

I'll take my chances with the airbag. Even if the seatbelt keeps you in the car, a steering wheel embedded in your chest is a hell of a way to go.

Yeah, I believe they do.

Supernova wrote:

Does anybody believe these things really work towards SAVING people's lives?

Without a shadow of a doubt in my mind.

Shale wrote:

This being Labor Day weekend, there is something I just realized. For years now they don't give reports of the hundreds of ppl killed on the hi-ways that they did when I was a kid.

I think part of it is safer cars.

Every major national holiday there was the body count on the evening news. In addition to the U.S. Highways where speed limits were 55 or 60 MPH we had a brand new Interstate Highway system where ppl could travel at 70+ MPH in those big heavy unstable cars WITH NO SEAT BELTS!. Hit another one of those and it was all over. (you were all over the road).

Since seat belts with shoulder strap came into use and now airbags the fatalities seem to be less.

Our local news still does. I don't know if it used to be reported on national statistics or not, but, like I said, our local news always says how it was for the state.

My family owned an auto body shop and i have seen plenty of terribly crumpled up cars where people walked away with just some bruises or burns (they actually have a gun powder in the airbag that makes it explode). for the most part, the vehicle has to be on (not parked) and be hit in a head on impact. I have seen plenty of accidents where the impact was on the side of the car and the airbags did not deploy. Personally, I would prefer that some sort of foam explode rather than the airbags.... but there would have to be some sort of prevention of suffocation :O

I wouldn't want to find out if they don't.

Kral wrote:

I've never had an airbag deploy on me but I heard those things are actually dangerous. On the little notice about my vanity mirror it says something about how they can cause death.

Yeah, something that's supposed to prevent you from dying can kill you, doesn't make too much sense, especially given how far the technology of building safe cars is supposed to have come.