a chance of being thrown from the car even if their car has airbags. When looking at the airbag issue, we must first look at the issue of safety. When the idea of installing airbags was first introduced, it seemed to be a good, life-saving idea. However, airbags have snapped the necks of 135 children and short women. (Strong) Smaller women might survive their accidents if airbags werent installed in their vehicles. True, airbags have had some success. Airbags have been credited with saving 3,800 lives since they have been introduced. (Akre) The airbags may be saving some lives. However, in other cases, they are doing more damage than good. USA Today broke the story on airbag performance. The news report told us that airbags deliver enough non-lethal injuries to the passengers that it offsets their performance on overall injuries. The net result is that airbags have been found to cause injuries in so many accidents that the little good they do is overshadowed by the injuries they cause. Now that you understand some of the problems with the performance of airbags, lets look at another problem, why they are unreliable. The reliability of airbags is questioned since they do not protect all sizes of bodies. When the first airbags were tested, the engineers didnt take into account the different sizes of people the bags would have to protect. They used a one-sized dummy. The engineers didnt think about the possibility of babies in the front seat or smaller-framed people being hurt by the bags. The airbag deploys at speeds of 200 miles an hour. (Air bag) The bags explode when a sensor sets them off, whether the car is involved in a fender bender or a head on collision. If the cars sensors could sense the severity of the crash, the airbag could deploy with more or less force, resulting in less overall injuries. These "smart sensors" are still on the drawing board. It will be years before they are being put into full effect. According to Ford and...
