Well it seems a different post let me to make this one. This is my personal opinion, experience having been in a car accident myself, and also being a fireman and having to extricate people from cars...

Ill start with my accident. I went off the road into a ditch at about 25-30 mph. Air bag did not go off. There was no need for it to, i didnt hit the wheel because my seatbelt locked and held me in my seat. i can understand if my belt would have not restrained me but it did.

Now on to the other part. being a fireman. ive seen some messed up accidents that you can only see in nightmares. One instance im so glad the airbag did not go off. the guy was pulling a trailer with rebar on it and various other things. a semi rearended him, from what we could see the driver of the truck was wearing his seatbelt, it locked before he hit the steering wheel, airbag did not deploy. thank god it didnt, when the semi hit him it threw the rebar up into the back of the truck and pieces into the cab of the truck, you could see that if the airbag went off it would have slammed his head right into that rebar and more than likely right through his skull. it didnt go off, he was lucky.

another case, airbag when off after a 15 mph fender bender, went off, broke her nose and cheek bone and burned her neck, why? because while driving, talking on the phone she leaned forward to drive, airbag went off, the chemical inside burned her face because she was right up on the wheel.

i see the positives and negatives of it but after all the stuff i have seen, seatbelts save lives, airbags back them up, and boron steel is your hidden giant that helps just as much.

and all of you that say seatbelts dont say lives, give me a break, yeah a few have lived because they werent wearing it but if you would like i could get you some pics of people who didnt wear them and get you pictures of the accident and then get a picture to show how they are today.... dead. There are a lucky few that make it. i wear it everywhere every time, ill take the odds with wearing it vs. not wearing it.

So my vote goes yes to airbags and yes to always wearing my seatbelt. what about everyone else?

I don't have air bags in the car...I still feel safe (however I dont drive the car that often)...my previous 2 beater cars didnt have air bags either...
:S

Yes I agree with what you are saying...seatbelts saves lives and air bags back them up.

I strongly agree seatbelts are a must for sure. I know my friend came over from Sri Lanka, and he never wears a belt...me and my friends always yell at him to wear one while he drives...he wears it after some yelling, but other than that he never does...I always tell him how stupid he really is.

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So my vote goes yes to airbags and yes to always wearing my seatbelt. what about everyone else?

agreed. i have also seen some really nasty wrecks come through at work, i have seen death cars and serious accidents. some cars i see theses no way to even guess how it happened.


but on the other side. i have heard and seen cars where 3 passenger's where wearing seat belts but the forth was not. the car rolled several times and the one passenger not wearing a seat belt bounced around the car and killed or seriously injured the other people in the car. so really everyone needs to wear there seat belt to make them totally effective.


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First a shameless self-quote (from that other thread):

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Personally, I detest airbags. The idea of something exploding into your face scares the @!#$ out of me. Right now, I don't have a passenger bag. As soon as I can find a wheel that I like, the driver's side is coming out as well.

My reasoning is this:

Greg Zimmerman wrote:They built cars for decades with just seatbelts.

... and people learned to drive the cars (for the most part) safely knowing that they would wrap their foreheads around the steering wheel should they get into a nasty accident.

Nowadays, people have the mentality that they don't need to worry about it because "the airbag will protect me"

In the olden days, when you went 70 you knew it. Engine screaming, wind whistling (whether the windows were open or not). Today, 70 is like sitting in a leather chair in a quiet air conditioned room. (depending on the vehicle that is)

Everytime I drive one of my veteran vehicles, I'm reminded of this. My 70 Monte Carlo and 79 Chev Dually both are fun to drive. Not because they are quick, but because they actually require you to pay attention to not only the vehicle that you are driving, but the vehicles around you due to the non-advanced features.

But in all seriousness, today's vehicles are so well engineered and built that they are virtually effortless to drive. And because of this, folks don't need to focus much of their awareness and effort on driving the vehicle. That, of course, makes them far more vulnerable.

It's an interesting dichotomy..the better the vehicle, the worse the driver, the higher the speeds, the greater the danger.

They pull the dickish stunts that endanger not only themselves but other people as well because the auto industry has put this false sense of hope in the average person that the airbag is the cure-all to accident fatalities.

There was a study done in 2005 in regards to airbags:

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While the value of airbags seems dubious in the new study, the value of seatbelts is not. The analysis found that proper use of a seatbelt reduces the odds of death by 67 percent for any given speed category and airbag availability. Airbags, however, cause no statistical difference in car-crash deaths, except for unseatbelted occupants at low speeds, where the odds of death are estimated to be more than four times higher with an airbag than without....

“Making everyone have airbags and then verifying the effectiveness using only fatal crashes in FARS is like making everyone get radiation and then estimating the lives saved by looking only at people who have cancer. Overall, there will be more deaths if everyone is given radiation, but in the cancer subset, radiation will be effective.”

The new study directly contradicts assertions about airbag safety on the NHTSA Web site

edit: added email replies


Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Sunday, October 22, 2006 11:17 PM

Against, and I'll be putting in an after market steering wheel as soon as I get the momo hub adaptor.

But i looks uber cool without my seatbelt on..




/sarcisism



I dont have airbags in my car and i dont really feel unsafe.. i always wear my seatbelt and my first wreck when i hit a tree at about 30mph... airbag did deploy.. but didnt touch me.. seatbelt locked and my seat was tilt back a lil bit so it missed me.. plus the damn pass airbag totaled my car by shattering the windshield

Now say im on the highway and i get in a wreck.. yeh im sure airbags would help.. but i guess i dont really worry about it cuz i dont drive much out the city(35mph highest in city)

Kairdain, very well stated. People are getting way to careless because of the newer vehicles. My dad has a 71 camaro and it doesnt even have retensioners on teh seatbelts, your monte is probably the same way. you just click the lap belt, then the shoulder belt, then sinch them up tight enough and go from there.

Now a days, certain airbags are giving us problems on the new cars. we just bought a $1200 computer program that goes on a laptop. we scan the VIN it pulls the vehicle up, all the airbags, seat belt retensioner cylinders, boron steel pieces, and everything else to safely get someone out. it even tells you where to cut to drain the battery and to wait for a certain period of time if the need be.

I know it all comes down to personal opinion but mine is that if its in there, its been tested more and more, it does help, and every car is being produced with them, there must be a reason to have them in the car.

Vincent Morris wrote:My dad has a 71 camaro and it doesnt even have retensioners on teh seatbelts, your monte is probably the same way. you just click the lap belt, then the shoulder belt, then sinch them up tight enough and go from there.

Driver's belt is retractable (from a newer year car), passenger is cinch-'n-go

No shoulder belts (well, I have them, but they are the removable type and are not in the car most of the time).

no question here.....thumbs up to both air bags and seat belts, as some of you know i was in an accident last year, and theres no debating either as they saved my life

I would rather not have airbags in my car. I have had several accidents in which I was in a vehicle that didnt come with airbags, and in my previous sunfire which did come with them. What I have learned is that even in small accidents in which an airbag isnt needed they will still deploy...which causes even more damage because: a) they really do burn your skin... and b) in our cars the passenger airbag cover can crack the windshield. I do agree that in some cases airbags do save lives...but it's all in how the accident goes...I'd still rather take my chances with just my seatbelts.

I dont know what to say about air bags but i know for a fact that i will always wear my seat belt. Most dont know me and those who do dont know about this. It was when i was 11 and my dad got a el-comino from his dad as an inharetense. Well we were headed up to my moms parents place to go hunting. Back full of gear and the woods full of deer. Traffic was going about 75-80. It took one doe to come flying out of the woods to make a 7 car pile up. The first person that actually hit the deer was putsing with the radio. Once he noticed it crossing the road he did the stupid thing and swerved. He ended up clipping the car next to him in the rear, sending him into a spin. The next and next and next until it hit me and my dad. We flipped 7 1/2 times and landed on the roof of this el-comino. Now it was an old enough car to not have air bag but when we flipped it wasest a perfect flip. We hit the nose, then the back, then the nose then the back kind of flip. Now with that kind of movement your head gets REALLY close to things when she hits that nose. In this car we had only lap belts and i suffered from a semi-major concusion due to me shattering the glass with my head as she hit the nose and throw me to the right. I always wore my seat belt and always will.

Now i have a question about air bags. What would haev happened to me and my dad if there were air bags in that car while we were flipping. what if they didn't go off until it sent us flying when the nose hit to send the back end to the front?

This is my oppinion (17 year old) but some people have other loved ones like a wife/husband, kids, that would miss there dad/mom. Yes i know my parents would miss me but my dad tought me to not regret that i made it out of that crash alive. By this i mean try to save others lifes while possible sacraficing yours in return. If you get in a spin, TRY to tkae it away from others which might leave you spingin into a tree at extreme speeds. I HONESTLY would rather die in a crash then leave who ever i have to take care of me to pay for bills. If a seat belt doesn't save my life to the point of myself walking, having my self be able to take a leak with out others help, beign able to chew my own food, etc ... and if a air bag puts me in that state of being then im against air bags. Sounds kind of stupid but its the same way my parents are. We believe in God and if he wants us to go in a crash, its our time. If not we only hope we are fortunate enough to walk away from the crash with few brouses and scratches.

if its up to god why not go without seatbelts then? ive never understood that. kinda along the same lines as those people who refuse doctors help and refuse doctors treating their children and they state its in gods hands if he wants my kid to live he will let my kid live. wonder if god is sitting up in heaven going " hey idiot i made this guy become a doctor so he could save your kids life but your not listening to him"


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