About a week ago we discussed the ever-expanding Takata air bag recall. Since then, another person has been killed by a Takata air bag, bringing the total to 14, and the New York Times has published a front-page story on this scandal which highlighted the frustrations of consumers seeking a satisfactory solution. During that week I also read a statistical study of the performance of air bags in accidents which was published by the American Statistical Association's magazine Chance in 2005. In their study of accidents from 1997 through 2002 (before the first reported Takata explosions), Mary Meyer and Tremika Finney concluded that air bags did more overall harm than good. Among their conclusions: Air bags were most likely to do damage when deployed when car occupants were not belted in, that even used with seat belts they were more likely to cause injury in low-speed accidents and in non-frontal collisions, especially side impacts, and that they were least effective in accidents involving children, other people of small stature, or old people. After digesting 15 pages of numbers and analysis, I came upon this memorable analogy: "Making everyone have airbags and then verifying the effectiveness using only fatal crashes is like making everyone have radiation and then estimating 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." And remember, this study was conducted of accidents which did not involve apparent air bag malfunction; that is, no grenade-like explosions spraying the car interior with shrapnel. One element of the safety equation was consistently vindicated in this study: the use of seat belts. This brings our discussion back to the question of passive vs. active safety. Here are some pioneers from the Active Safety Hall of Fame...
The 1956 Citroen DS19 was the first car produced in large numbers to standardize power disc brakes. It also featured this early version of a collapsible steering column; when the front wheels were pointed straight ahead, the wheel was at 7 o'clock. In a frontal impact, this directed the driver (before seat belts) to the center of the car.
Nash had offered lap belts as an option as early as 1949, and Ford in 1955. In 1958 Saab became the first manufacturer to standardize lap belts, in the GT750.
Volvo made a major step forward, and cemented its reputation for active safety, by standardizing the now-familiar 3-point seat belts in 1959.
England's Jensen took a brave leap into the future in 1966, standardizing the Dunlop Maxaret anti-skid system, combined with 4 wheel disc brakes and all-wheel drive with a torque-sensing center differential, on its FF. Mercedes-Benz offered a similar braking system, by then called anti-lock brakes, a dozen years later. At the dawn of the 1980s, Audi offered a similar all-wheel drive system to the FF on the first of its Quattro series.
Unlike the case with air bags, the jury is not out on these features. We know that this stuff works, and that it works especially well when combined with pro-active driver education, and even better in societies where drunk drivers routinely lose their licenses. Meanwhile, consumers who call Honda or Subaru about removing their air bags while awaiting replacements get told that removing the bags is illegal, because the air bags are part of "an integrated safety system." And the New York Times reported that unlike during the unraveling of the VW emissions software scam, dealers are still allowed to sell cars with recalled (read "defective") air bags in them. Apparently we've all got to have that radiation whether we have cancer or not. Someday, after Takata has gone into the bankruptcy it richly deserves, we may look back and see that using ammonium nitrate in air bags was about as sensible as using hydrogen as a lifting medium in airships. I'm there already; it looks like it will take awhile for some car manufacturers to catch up.
Photo credits:
Citroen DS19: drive-my.com
Saab 750GT: Saab ad, reprinted by swedecars.com
Volvo 122: Volvo ad, reprinted by brightcreatives.nl
Jensen FF: bringatrailer.com
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