Safe Speed Forums

My bet would be the idiot was on a mobile phone when the accident happened and the airbag smashed it back and up into he nose.

Still I would rather a small cut (that’s all it really is) than having the bones in my face smashed by the steering wheel.

You should leave it in to shock people about what happens in a car crash. The picture is not nice because force and violence is not nice.

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That's why SafeSpeed is working so hard to improve real road safety.

Wiring should not be a cause for concern. If any wire in the airbag circuit is broken, shorted to ground or 12v, the airbag computer module will immediately detect the fault, shutting down entire system. The driver gets a red warning lamp on the dash.

It's the 10 year "lifetime" on the airbag units themselves that sounds worrying, with airbag equippped cars now getting well past that age and entering "bargain car" territory. How many people will pay for an expensive airbag inspection on a car that's only worth 300 quid?

BTW disabling your airbags is not illegal, but you will invalidate your insurance if you don't tell your insurer you've done it.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

They certainly fail to a safe state due to wiring faults. I know this because I did some work for a company that made rotary connectors for a major car manufacturer. A rotary connector is the bit that connects the static bits on the steering column with the rotating bit in the steering wheel (airbag). Unfortunately a large batch of these parts had a misalignment in the crimping machine such that they were crimped through the insulation resulting in intermittant contacts. Big warranty issue with thousands of parts having to be replaced as the warning light came on with the part supplier having to pay for the new parts, mechanics costs and shipping (~ 10 times the price received for the original bits), but not one airbag went off incorrectly.