Now, automakers will make commercials suggesting they include these things because they care about your safety

only for larger cars? I think smaller cars need them more, but them again that would raise their costs.

It’s about time though. That really should be law.
And it’ll slow down a few of the Chinese & Indian automakers as well from entering US soil. Anything to block the ugly, unsafe, cheap developing country-based cars is a step in the right direction.

Don’t worry…. the Chinese automakers will include all the airbags.
They won’t deploy when they’re suppose to but hey… they’ll be in there.

With so many SUVs and large trucks on the street, this has become a necessity, unfortunately.

Yes this will effectively forces out all unsafe cars, making our choices easier since standard safety reqs are already set to a high bar. You won’t need to get your college kid a Honda anymore…

Just what we need… more mandatory WEIGHT added to our cars! Things like this are the reason every sporty car has gained 1000lbs over the past 20 years.

.

chinese airbags might deploy when your car hits something at 10mph since they seem to be completely totaled at 40mph

My first submission didn’t post.

Manufacturers are not responsible for making their vehicles safer. But, since there are these regulations, automakers have every right to profit from the additions. Ultimately, the government shouldn’t be mandating safety features. If a van full of children isn’t equipped with side-impact airbags and another driver runs a red light and t-bars the van, who’s at fault for the deaths? The automaker for not equipping the van with side-impact airbags? Or the other driver for running into the van? The automaker didn’t cause the accident.

Hari – Exactly. With all of the whining and crying about fuel efficiency, why not mandate more equipment on vehicles!?

How about heavier fines and punishment for those who cause crashes instead of mandating ’safety’ equipment that gives a false sense of security? I swear, archeologists one day will be speaking of a long lost virtue unseen in civilization since the 2nd millenium, Responsibility.

Hari, you’re an idiot. I’d rather live than lose 1 mpg.

@Stridder44

I’m not trying to gain fuel efficiency… my current car only gets about 18mpg and after I put this new engine in, it will be more like 12mpg. I’m trying to increase acceleration, decrease braking distance, and improve handling. I could care less about airbags!

Wow, lots of safety hostility today. Piablo, there *are* fines and punishment for those who cause crashes, against whom should they be heavier? Those who don’t cause crashes? And, there may be a day when safety equipment causes a false sense of security, but we’re no where near that. Maybe when the radar/distronic cruise control/whatever technology that slows and stops cars approaching obstacles becomes more commonplace, but who feels invincible because a few extra airbags in their car will deploy?
I *completely* disagree with Bryce about government regs. No safety regs at all? Sure, automakers don’t cause accidents… mostly (any Pinto owners out there), but automakers can certainly anticipate accidents because they will happen. Is it the automakers’ job to keep people safe? Maybe not, and maybe without safety regs, automakers would still strive for more safety because the buying public will demand it. But there’s no downside to safety regs beside the initial cost (and how expensive is a seat belt or airbag, anyway), and even then things might even out. E.g., safety regs for all means that everyone is more safe. Which means that everyone is less injured when accidents happen, which means less car insurance payouts, less health insurance payouts, which means less premiums for all. What would be the toll on society if there were 100 or 200 million less seat belts out there?….

Scarface03, the only ‘toll’ on society would be more personal responsibility and less outsourcing of that responsibility to other venues. And market economics play no role in this because the government is beating the market to the punch. Also, your assertion that insurance premiums would drop isn’t a satisfactory argument. Assuming that there is a noticeable difference in crash worthiness and survivability, I can simply argue that lower premiums are the result of higher vehicle prices. Pay for less gas but pay more for a hybrid.

Think about this for a second…

It’s the person who makes the car unsafe, not the car itself.

Scarface and Stridder – take public transportation and get off the road. Better yet, build yourself a hamster ball and drive around in that.

I’m against the regulation b/c you have a choice to buy it or not. Regulate it and take away that choice. Adding it will only raise the price of the car anyways, so what are we really gaining by having this unecessary regulation?

WTF? What does personal responsibility have to do with safety equipment? There are going to be accidents, increasing punishment will solve nothing. It might reduce the number of accidents due to negligence at best. People aren’t going to stop sliding on patches of ice, tires aren’t going to stop blowing out, etc.

Safety regulations make things better for everyone.

Want to complain about weight? Build a race car, you can cut all the weight out you want. Problem solved.

Mitch: that was funny: chinese airbags might randomly deploy, dispatching a cloud of lead paint into the driver’s face

Imagine how many mpg a honda civic would have if it had today’s engine and the old cvcc’s safety equipment

“There are going to be accidents” is a defeatist argument. There’s no hope so why bother?? Luckily there have been greater minds in history during challenging situations that choose not to roll over. Personal responsibility has everything to do with preventing accidents. Don’t monkey with your damn phone while driving?! Responsibility. It’s the scumbags that blow by people doing 50mph over the limit. Take their license away and I’d bet we see a drop in accidents. When it’s kids causing half of the accidents out there, why should the government mandate xxxx instead of either keeping kids off of the roads or putting them through better education?? If it’s okay to raise the hell out of fines for drunk driving, increase them for causing an accident.

This whole argument of making vehicles safer is never ending. You can mandate every safety feature invented and it will still NEVER be safe when traveling over 30. And quite frankly, people aren’t frickin dieing in 30mph crashes. If you were a man of physics, you would understand that weight adds to momentum. The momentum carries those 3000 mandated pounds of metal through your vehicle. If car companies were able to design lightweight vehicles we wouldn’t have half of these problems.

While it is good to raise awareness about safety, I think they should focus on improving a car’s avoidance rather than stuff all sorts of technology in them and make them heavy. If you think about it, if an SUV hits you at 60-80 mph at the side in any car, you are dead, no matter what car you’re in. What these restraints will do is make you recognisable after the crash. But if they manage to lighten the vehicles they will stop better, have better agility and their response will be greatly improved. I’m not writing off airbags or other safety equipment entirely, but all they seem to focus on is to lessen your injuries in a crash, rather than focusing more on avoiding. Another suggestion will be to have harder driving tests, because being alert on the road will lessen chances of having a crash, instead of relying on electronics that can malfunction, crash and/ or just don’t work for some unknown reason. People need to use their disgression instead of being lazy and let all the electronics do the work.

If you’re so concerned about side air bags, where a damn helmet! LMAO!

Here is a federal regulation that I want to propose… All sports coupes and sedans should be no more than 3000lbs with special tax incentives if they are under 2500lbs.

About d*mn tiime indeed!

Piablo, you’ve lost me with your argument. kosai03 is right. Your gripe is with personal responsibility, but I don’t see how safety regulations impact that. In your last big post you mention cell-phone use and excessive speeders–how will NOT having side airbags (or any other safety equipment, for that matter) mend address those concerns? Advocating safety is just simply not the same as advocating irresponsibility. It’s certainly not outsourcing the responsibility either. Period.

I also don’t buy your momentum argument. Take your favorite safety-laden car, take out ABS, AWD, passive safety, high tensile strength steel, limited slips, traction control, brake force distribution, and any safety goodies you want. Say you’ve saved yourself 1000 pounds or 1500 pounds, and then drive yourself into an accident. The momentum of your light-weight vehicle, or the light-weight vehicle that hits you, will still send you to the hospital. You’re no safer because your car is lighter. The lightest car is still pretty damn dangerous.

The good news is, if you take your new safety-less, lightweight car and take out all the seat belts, you’ll be able to sell it to Bryce.

You completely missed the point. If people stop monkeying with their damn cell phones while driving, and stop traveling 30mph faster than everyone else, or 30mph slower for that matter, we wouldn’t need side airbags! Not sure what is so difficult there. As I said, if you are that worried, wear a helmet while driving your car. Safety features do not save as many lives as preventing the accident in the first place.

You can accept Newton’s Laws of Physics or not accept them, up to you. However, if you think a 50lb medicine ball is as easy to stop as a 4oz baseball, I suggest you go ahead and test your new theories. By the way, before you do, I suggest you saddle up all of the safety equipment you can find. Afterwards, while you are lying in a hosptial bed, I suggest you read up on Car and Driver, or MotorTrend, or any car mag and contrast the breaking differences between a Chevy Suburban and a Chevy Aveo. Once you have learned that lighter vehicles are easier to stop, think back to how you could have been more responsible in school and could have hit the books a bit harder in physics class the day Newton was discussed. Cuz, had you been more responsible and learned then, you wouldn’t have been bowled over by a 50lb speeding medicine ball. My “theory” in a nutshell.

Piablo, I get the laws of physics as well as the next guy, and everyone here gets the fact that all other things being equal, less weight means easier to stop. But we’re not talking about medicine balls here. We’re talking about vehicles that weigh *thousands* of pounds–even stripped of safety equipment. When you’re dealing with that much energy in a collision, I don’t think you’ll ever get to the point where the weight you would save excluding safety equipment would ever be preferable in a collision than having the safety equipment to begin with.

And, again, nothing you’ve said convinces me that endorsing safety breeds irresponsible drivers.

And no one’s really addressed the issue that the MARKET has largely beat the government to the punch. Side air bags are nothing new in cars. Side air bags and side curtain air bags are very commonplace, even in entry-level models and trims.

Is there anyone here who chose not to buy a car because it had safety equipment you didn’t want?

Scarface03, think about this for a moment…

Simply put, the heavier the car, the more damage it will inflict into cars that aren’t as heavy, such as compacts, etc..

If we were to reduce the overall weight of these vehicles, it would make our roads safer, period. Not only that, but the lighter the car, the better the manuverability and the economy.

But it still won’t stop accidents. That falls on the responsibility of the person behind the wheel. Remember, the large majority of the time it’s not the car that creates the accident!

jJayC08,
I need to get some things back on track here. I am simply not buying the weight argument. I agree that reducing weight has positive dynamic benefits. How many times can I say that? What I’m saying is that the gains to be had by deleting certain safety features (or refusing to install certain safety features) in a given car are negligible. You and Piablo still make the mistake of comparing apples to oranges. We all get the general idea regarding what might happen in a Surburban vs. Aveo accident, but the weight disparity between the two is NOT because one is laden with safety features and the other isn’t. It’s because they are simply two different styles of cars–one a huge SUV, the other a subcompact. Safety equipment doesn’t make the match-up unfair to the Aveo.

The true comparison, and the point I’m making, is in comparing an Aveo with all available safety features (including the ones the government makes Chevy install) and an Aveo without the features. Now, the question is, which Aveo do you want? Will the dynamic gains to be had with the reduced weight of the stripped out version make it a more safe car because its more maneuverable or brakes quicker than a slightly heavier car with the safety features? My point is that stripped out Aveo would not be safer. I just don’t see those weight gains outweighing the benefits of having those safety features. I don’t care how many feet you can scrub off your 60-0 braking distance, because–in comparing the two Aveos and not an Aveo with a Suburban– the benefit would be negligible. Now, if your solution is to eliminate all Suburbans from the road to make us all safer, because we don’t need those tanks possibly crashing into our Aveos, well that’s an entirely different discussion.

Secondly, do not make the assumption that I favor passive or technological safety over driver responsibility. I’ve never made that argument. My only point has been that the two are completely independent considerations, because Piablo suggested that adding safety features makes drivers more irresponsible. I don’t buy that at all.

In fact, if you ask me, I think driver responsibility would more than compensate for any loss of vehicle dynamics had by having safety features added to the car. For example, a good driver, regardless of what car he’s driving or how much it weighs, appreciates the distance it takes to bring his car to a stop safely, and he should brake according. It doesn’t matter if a similar, lighter car could do it in less distance. A good driver should simply drive his car responsibly.

But, and now I’ve come full circle, my point here is that we all know that all drivers don’t all drive responsibly all the time. Accidents will happen, and acknowledging that fact isn’t a collective white flag waving in the air for driver responsibility. It is simply the world we live in, and when it happens, I’m all for having a side airbag in my car, and I don’t think the government’s out of line for making the company that built my car put it there.

I understand what your saying, you’ve cleared your statement up some. But which would you rather have hitting you, an Aveo without any safety features, or an Aveo with 1000 ibs of safety equipement on board. Now, of course the person hitting you would want that equipement, but what if you could have the best of both worlds?

SUVs and large trucks are another problem. There are always going to be large trucks and SUVS, albeit they don’t have to be as heavy. What if we could downsize these vehicles too? That would make all cars safer.

Does that mean we should elliminate safety precautions in cars? No, I’m just saying we should reduce the overall weight of them.

Honestly, air bags/ABS/stability control systems aren’t the big weight contributors from safety equipment. It’s the safety systems in the structure of the car itself: side impact beams, reinforced passenger areas, etc. All those little things that keep your car from acting like it was made in China in the event of a crash. They’re pretty much the most import safety equipment.

If weight is your main beef with safety systems, there are much better alternatives to removing them. Make compact cars compact again and remove most of the sound deadening. Combine that with modern manufacturing techniques like hydroforming and tada, the car is lighter still very safe. How many people do you think are going to like that though?

piablo must be a kid from the content of his posts.
One things for sure. I’d never get in a car with him.

Safer cars are a bad thing?? Yeah, ok.

Didn’t they run this a while ago?

Anyway, will make cars heavier and slightly more expense but what the hell..it saves lives.

You know, Audi had contended that the aggressively bolstered Konig seats in the European spec RS4s actually protected the occupants better in a collision than the seats and side airbags in the US models. Go figure. If I had the choice, I’d take the seats instead.

Norby – Pretty creepy you’re contemplating getting in my car in the first place. Either way, I don’t pull over for hooking scum so you’re SOL.

Dear god we’ll save 1000 people a year, out of 300,000,000 people! Such a win! Consider this while you campaign for the next useless safety feature… When your vehicle is involved in a crash and your 30 airbags go off choking you inside your car, you’ll be $2000 closer to totaling your vehicle. Sure an airbag only costs maybe $100 to install, but the repair is anywhere from $500 to $2000. Add 4 of those to your car and you better hope you have gap insurance.

^ Piablo, you’re a ****ing idiot, you’re starting to blither on like a ****ing knobgobbling sheepshagging pedophile. Enough already, cram your beak with some meat and shut the **** up.

To everyone else, side airbags are fine if they save lives. I agree with Piablo, though, that the money may be well spent trying to enforce safer driving practices.

You want to see fewer accidents? Start by putting blackboxes in cars. Then watch the accident rate plummet to unprecedented lows. That, and ban cellphones in cars without a bluetooth headset.

Deanster, actually oil companies are already doing that to enforce their drivers to drive within the speed limits. But who would want to live in a country where you can’t drive up to 90 mph without getting a ticket? Toyota would sell very well in such a place.

Just need to mandate nerf cars with bumper car bumpers all the way around. But those style snobs would not buy a safe car.

Government here to help us and to protect us. Lexus, BMW, Benz already have more then Uncle Sam will mandate. Ditto other less expensive models, driven by people who are well to do. Does society really need mandate (at the cost of mandating) safety for the segment of society who can not afford safety? Ok, “Larry the cable guy” will survive in his Aveo due to airbags and then will cost society even more via lung and liver cancer (and will suffer more himself).

All regulations beget bigger government, which begets higher taxes and perhaps prevents “Larry the cable guy” to buy a safer car on his own accords (or perhaps it’s high cost of beer and cigarettes that stops him).

About the black box, it shouldn’t be used to hand out tickets, but your insurance should be adjusted based on how ****ing crazy you drive. If it registers burnouts and skids and 100+ mph runs through town, then maybe you need a ****ing insurance increase.

If you’re a little old lady going 10 mph on a small backroad, then adjust down. For everyone else, something in between.

From Piablo: “I suggest you read up on Car and Driver, or MotorTrend, or any car mag and contrast the breaking differences between a Chevy Suburban and a Chevy Aveo.”

Car and Driver (from caranddriver.com): 2007 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 LTZ 4WD, 70mph-0mph braking distance: 190 feet.
2007 Chevrolet Aveo LT, 70mph-0mph braking distance: 209 feet.

I guess the Aveo has 19 more feet in which to “break” in an accident, which it most assuredly will.

OH SNAP!!!! Oh ****!!! Piablo, YOU GOT SERVED!!! OH SNAP!!!

Insurance companies suck.

GREAT IDEA