The air bag thing is about to get really out of hand. 
And really, really expensive.
Apparently, it’s not enough that most cars now have four (or six) air bags inside. Volvo thinks it’s time to put air bags on the outside of cars, too. For the sake, not of the children, but of pedestrians. The Swedish automaker last week revealed a prototype S40 equipped with an outside air bag. It deploys in the event of a pedestrian flying over the hood, cushioning his impact at the windshield. The hood raises up slightly and the u-shaped bag erupts from the cowl area.
Volvo cites (predictably) the lives that could be saved, the injuries averted. No mention, as usual, of the downsides – which are not limited to cost this time, either.
Maybe there are no deer in Sweden.
A deer is a lot like a person ambling across the Interstate. A full-grown buck weighs about the same as a full-grown man. When you ’round a curve and there stands Bambi – it’s not unlike encountering Sven suddenly trying to occupy the same space as your car’s front bumper. Only if you happen to be driving the Volvo Outside Air Bag Car, you can expect more than a dented front clip. You can expect the sheer terror that will come from no longer being able to see a god-damned thing because your view is obstructed by a big balloon. Instead of totaling the deer, you’ll total your car – maybe yourself, too. I doubt Volvo has figured out how to engineer sensors that can distinguish a human in the road from a hooved rat in the road. 
And of course, you can expect these Next Gen air bags to be the next thing mandated by the government. The pull is just too irresistible. Volvo – and every other car company, plus the suppliers of all the components involved – knows very well these bags are another way to increase their (rent-seeking) profit margin. The outside air bags will not be supplied at cost. They will be supplied at cost-plus. Just like the airbags you’ve already got or rather, which you were forced to buy. All the odious warbling about “safety” aside, the bottom line is the bottom line. Doubt it? Then watch what happens in the coming weeks and months. There will be a PR/lobbying campaign to pressure lawmakers. And these lawmakers, of course, will have every reason to issue the new fatwa. Who, after all, could be against safety? It’s all about saving lives! There is that.
And there is also the monetary pressure that will be brought to bear by the industrial combines – you know, the car companies. This is how we got the first air bags – after they were rejected by the marketplace. When consumers don’t want something, make them buy it. It’s so much more efficient.
It’s also brilliantly deceptive. When the first air bags came out as optional equipment back in the ’70s, the cost of the option was both high and plainly visible. But like tax withholding, when government mandates something be added to the car’s roster of standard equipment, you never get to see the price of that particular item. All you see is the bottom line price of the car. It makes it all go down so much easier – especially with zero percent interest and low, low monthly payments.
So, what are we looking at here?
Volvo didn’t quote any figures and no one’s got any estimates out in the public domain. But another several hundred bucks per car at the retail level – at the very least – is a reasonable guess. There will be the bag itself, plus all the associated sensors and wiring, plus modified hood designs that operate in concert with the deploying bag. 
I suspect the really big costs, though, will come in the form of much higher crash-repair costs after relatively minor impacts. Current inside air bags are set up to go off only in the event of a pretty serious accident. But much less force is involved when you strike a deer, say – as opposed to another car.
Now, in addition to the minor bodywork, you’ll also have the expense of replacing that outside air bag. For an idea of the cost, ask a body shop (or insurance adjuster) how much it costs to replace the driver and front seat bags (which means, replacing the entire steering wheel and – usually – the dashboard, too) after they deploy. The average cost for that is in the neighborhood of $2,000.
So, deer strikes are about to get a lot more expensive. Your insurance bill, too. Because the potential repair costs (including the ever-lowering “total” threshold) reflect in your premiums.
But oh, the lives that will be saved!
Yes, indeed. Eventually and probably not too far down the road, driving will be so expensive that more and more of us will be walking. And that will save even more lives.
Maybe they’ll start requiring us to be fitted with air bags at that point?
I would not be surprised… .
This wouldn’t work in the UK.
Too many drunks on their way home would be jumping on your bonnet (hood) to see if they could trigger the bag/s…
AC
I do not know how many of you have ever been in an airbag car when the bag deployed, but let me tell you, it is not a pleasant experience. I have lived through 3 air bag deployments. I never wrecked the car. All of mine were “inadvertent”. That means it was not supposed to happen, but it did. Mine was a 73 Chevy Impala 4 door sedan, with an Olds Dash. I do not recall the exact number of these assigned to our office, but there were a bunch. When it was hot, if you failed to leave some windows down, they would trigger. The 73 Impala is not a small car. If the bag deployed with the windows shut, the windshield had a million cracks, and the back window was in a million pieces on the ground. If you happened to be driving the car, your left hand wiped out the driver’s door window, and your left hand left a big bruise on your passenger’s breast.It also crammed your cigarette, cigar, or pipe into your face, and wrecked your glasses.It also broke both of your hands, and your passenger’s nose.
Mine never deployed in the parking lot, mainly because I was so junior, I was always on the road, but it blew off once with an observer from home office riding shotgun, once when I was stopped at about 2 AM in Detroit for California Stopping lights–think about this 2 AM–Detroit–STOP? If there is no cross traffic, the last thing you want to do is STOP long enough for the muggers to get into the car. When the bag deployed, and showered the cop car with glass, the cop handed my license back to me, and said that the only other guys he had seen who’s cars did that had Italian last names. Ever try to drive with a garbage bag sticking out of the center of the steering wheel?
Actually, it did deploy once when it was supposed to–about 15 minutes late. I was siting at a train crossing, and I happened to note, in my rear view mirror, that a guy was really coming up fast. I decided to get out of the car. SMART ME!! I don’t know how fast he was going when he packed my car into the train, but both cars looked like what you end up with when the junk yard packs the car into a cube. The cops had actually arrived, when my air bag deployed. It broke his glasses, and he wasn’t even in the car. Nothing good happens at 2 in the morning. Cop give me a ride home? HAHAHA!! Taxi cab?? 50,000 comedians out of work, and you need to hear my jokes? 1973–what do you mean cell phone–there were still phone booths where superman could change clothes, except which one of my married friends should I call, and see how much worse his wife would abuse me? I was already Uncle John, the bad example. I tried hitching a ride–you could do that back then, even if you were not in uniform. I finally got home, and called in sick the next day. I also told my boss what happened to my car.
Are you ready for out of date politically incorrect ethnic jokes–How about how does a Polish parachute work? Opens on impact!!
How does an auto air bag work? Opens on impact, MAYBE!!!
John,
Thanks for all this info – it’s another example of how much the government really cares about “our safety.”
It will be interesting, as the years roll by, to see what happens as large numbers of 20-plus year-old cars with air bags remain in service….
*sigh* With my $200.00 employee discount, in 1962 I paid $1475.00 for my first new VW Beetle . . . a white sunroof.
If I could purchase a new 1967 Beetle today I would do it. I recall paying less that $2,000 for a new one in 1967. With its 1500 cc air-cooled engine it would cruise all day on level roads at 75 plus.
The ’92 Toyota Corolla that I own today cost about six times what I paid for my 67 Beetle.
I could remove a Beetle engine, rebuild it and reinstall it in a single day. I seem to recall that, with a new clutch and having the flywheel machined the total cost was about $400.00. That included new pistons and cylinders, a new oil pump, new exhaust valves, along with other parts.
The Beetle is the only car that I truly loved. I’ve owned many other cars and a LUV but they were only soulless transportation
I got bored after a few years with VW and moved up to Porsche. From there I went on to Toyota. During the last fifteen years of my career I owned my own Foreign Car Repair Shop. I retired in 1998. Today I spend my time writing the awful truth about those who deserve the exposure. Remember Nuremberg!
I hold these Truths…
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Some of what’s next is being decided at this open NTSB meeting.
Tuesday at 8:30am, on March 27th, attendance is free, no registration required. You, are allowed to VIEW, not have input like in Switzerland of course.
This partisan mob of They, not some objective engineers or scientists, will decide on your behalf.
It is chaired by the lovely and security-vetted Deborah Hersman, “one of our nations most visionary and passionate safety leaders across all modes of transportation”
She has been on-scene for 19 major transportation accidents, especially the airplane crash of Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, the one-time candidate who dared to say the War on Drugs and other non-defensive wars are a waste of our national treasure.
http://www.cryptome.org/2012/03/ntsb031512.htm
Today, my wife’s 2002 Honda CRV (@112k miles, well-maintained and in good condition) was t-boned at slow speed in the aisle of a parking lot by someone backing out of a parking space who “didn’t see” her. The 2-part good news: 1) My wife was unhurt, and 2) her car was old enough that it had no fed-mandated side-impact airbags to deploy. #2 will probably make the difference between the at-fault driver’s insurance company having to pay to fix the veteran-but-still-well-working car and being able to “total” it: thus necessitating a new car purchase that we can ill afford.
A side note. About 20 years ago–as I was running on a sidewalk and crossing a side street–a driver stopped at the stop sign where I was crossing with the right of way (and with whom I swear I had made eye contact). As I stepped off the curb, he floor-boarded it. I wound up doing a Hollywood stunt-roll over the hood of his sports car and totally caved in the windshield before I wound up on the pavement with (thankfully) minor injuries. When he exited his car and came up to me, he said that he “didn’t see” me.
I said: “I’m 6’4″, weigh over 220#, and it is broad daylight. What’s not to see, moron!?”
To this day, whenever a driver does something boneheaded and says “I didn’t see…”, I just want to go medieval on the ***hole.
Thanks, Eric, for the space and opportunity to rant.
Jay, I am about the same size as you. I’ve been hit in the cross walk a few times. Only got knocked down once. Twice while I was directly in front of the driver!
People routinely claim ‘not to see’ me when I am on a bicycle.
Jay,
Sorry about the car – but glad it’s fixable (and that no one was injured). You’re absolutely right about the air bags. Had the Honda had ’em and had they gone off – time to “retire” a perfectly good car and leave you with a check for not much.
On the other: I am coming to believe that a lot of people out there are literally zombies. Whether as a result of medication in pill form or medication in the form of the fluoride in their water, I dunno. But something’s not right at the Circle K….
“So he’s been thrown in the woods.” Had to laugh at that one, Eric. I stumbled on to your articles at LRC but have only recently been reading your site directly. It’s become a must read for me. Congratulations. Given that this article is Clover related, it occurred to me some time ago while reading another piece on here more concerned with speed, that if speed kills, as we are told so often in mantra like fashion, what exactly is it about continental European roads that makes them safe at the kind of speeds that are not to be found anywhere in the English speaking world? Ya know, after conversion from kilometres to miles. Same for South America etc. etc. A shame Clover has gone. Maybe he would have the answer.
Oh I’m sure sure he has the answer! Thing with Clover he does not answer direct questions, but gets caught up in tangents and his feelings. Anything he posts worthwhile I’m sure Eric will let thru.
Welcome, Rich!
I’ve pointed out the Autobahn example to Clover numerous times; along with countless other factual counterpoints to his emoting. I’s hopeless. You might as well try to get an apple pie to sing. I “threw him in the woods” like some of the country folk down here do with their old washing machines. He’s about as useful. Some – me included – suspect he may be one of those people you’ve probably read about who get paid to post annoying, goading garbage on forums such as this one as part of an effort to annoy (and discourage) the legitimate posters/ He’s plagued this site for two years and just won’t go away – despite near-universal mocking – and correcting that you’d think would embarrass any sentient person into silence!
Here’s Clover’s latest colon cough (excerpted):
“Scruffy, the world has been adding millions of cars to the roadways each year. Do you have an extra oil well in your back yard to power all those cars?”
Like pulling legs off a spider, isn’t it?
The prose of clovers consists of equal parts of regurgitated pablum and undigested nuggets of high fructose corn syrup sentimentality.
The greatest metropolis of all time, Babylon, was built of asphalt taken from nearby oil pits 4000 years ago.
The Chinese used bamboo to drill for oil since at least 350 AD.
Commercial oil wells have only been in operation since the 1850s.
To a clover mind, the world spews out oil without any human intelligence whatsoever. The earth gives birth to machines wholly formed from some type of metallic gaea birthing canal.
The canal may be near Kawasaki, Kanagawa, a state adjacent to Tokyo. At least in the cotton candy factoid gobbling mind of clovers and proles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiS39wYMXZo
ka wa sa ki heavy industries
Apologies if this is inappropriate, Eric, and if it is so, please feel free to delete my post. I could use some input on a vehicle I’m thinking of buying. I’m looking at this toyota pickup with high miles but lots of recent work on it. I need a small fuel-efficient truck for farm work mostly but also occasional day trips to the coast. Owner says he’ll take $2400 but I think that’s still too high.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks, m
http://tinyurl.com/7gldzep
Not a bad looking truck to me. Check the KKB blue book, and some other comparisons before contacting him. Do some research and see what engine, tranny, and rear it has, and how much replacements are. See what the average drop dead mileage is for a unit like that. Are you mechanical? Just a personal FYI, when I see 3k I offer 2.5k or less. A small pickup is worth its weight in gold!
This looks worth checking out – and if it’s as advertised, the price is very fair. As dom says, a compact pick-up is worth its weight in gold (or just about). $2,400 – OBO – is a great price for a solid, good running truck. This one even looks nice, too.
I’d call him tonight.
Thanks, guys. I’m on it.
The lil’ trucklet is mine. It’s a beauty. Can’t believe I got it for $2400. Now I’m gonna go round up some dam-building beavers.
Congrats on the new Toy. It’s a good looking little truck.
Soon will come the day when people will be mandated to wear clothing with air bags because they’ve become so dumbed down that they no longer posses the ability to look both ways and cross the street safely.
The problem of course, is mandating anything. What Clover & Badger do is build great damming walls of china. They wall off all human action, and then allow a trickle to flow through. This trickle of allowed behavior spins the turbine blades that power their great society. Great society for them that is.
The clovers seem to always end up ruining this sweet set up though. Sort of like at the end of Easy Rider, when Billy & Wyatt are killed by some clovers who didn’t like their long hair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lhoeZdVRvLA
It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding
I’m no engineer so I’ll err to folks who know better than I, but is this thing even going to work in the first place? With the severe angle of windshields today it looks to me like a hit pedestrian would just skip off of this thing.
Or is it only meant to make a difference up to a certain speed?
Maybe the state can repurpose the impact balloons that were used to cushion the landing of one of those Mars rovers? Why, just wrap the entire damn car in the rover bags and let the cars just roll and bounce down the road, like so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airbags.jpg
Think of all the unemployed NASA engineers that could also be repurposed for this task as well.
I worked for Siemens Automotive in Germany and Romania for 4.5 years and we were working on this as far back as 2004. I thought it was absurd back then and I think it’s absurd now. Just more needless bullshit that the car manufacturers come up with and then get the gov’t to mandate it.
Bend over, grab your ankles and kiss your ass good-bye because the gov’t will always mandate the most ridiculous, absurd, needless, inefficient things because they can.
The first question is how do we stop all the new mandates? Second, how do we get them to drop stupid ones we have already? How come private property is not private? Why call it that then? Shit is crazy.. And how come I pay so many fucking taxes/fees on my PRIVATE property!
Cloverian belief says that without the government there would be no private property so you have to pay taxes on it to government because otherwise someone would take it from you which government will do if you don’t pay the taxes. Got it? 🙂
Indeed. Luckily, here in this oasis of anti-Cloverism, we’re free to not associate with Clover (and I’m free to not give him a forum). He’s been flushed into the sewers where he belongs!
PS: Check this out, Clover’s latest –
“Yes Germany had a lot during world war II but they did not have long range missiles and a bomb that can kill millions like Iran is probably close to”
Except of course that Germany invented the ballistic missile (V2) and was the first to use them in combat. Peenemunde, V2 and Wernher von Braun are three more items Clover’s never heard of, apparently.
Pfft LOL!!
Clover has that very dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance that’s for sure. On the other side of that statement is the overstated capability of Iran’s missiles. Something that has been so widely mocked it’s now a meme that started with this:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/
And he knows what Iran has and doesn’t have how? And they shouldn’t be able to arm themselves with nuclear weapons like every country surounding them because? And the only country in the history of humanity to ever use nuclear weapons to kill innocent men, women and children should decide who can and cannot have nuclear weapons as well because?
Yea, comments like that are all you need to know about someone. They live in an illusionary world created for them by the gov’t and their propaganda network known as the mainstream media.
I’m not for isolating myself with people who only agree with me all the time but communication with that guy is just a waste of time.
Here’s another excerpt from The Recently Flushed:
“Iran has never been part of a significant ware so they will do nothing in the future? They have not had enough fire power to do anything. Now they are building long range missiles and nuclear bombs.”
A sane government concerned with its real mandate of providing for defense would mothball the flattops and bring the army home. If there were really a looming threat of the Islamobomb on a missile, continue developing the F-22 and missile defense. Hiding behind those two things and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans there is no realistic threat to this nation.
Whether or not Nazi Germany had aspirations of world conquest is immaterial; they did not have the naval forces to make it possible. The Kriegsmarine was built up as a defensive force against the Royal Navy. It wasn’t designed to project power over the horizon. It was designed to harass the RN around the British Isles and cut the cross-Atlantic shipping lines.
It was heavy on submarines, as all defensive naval forces are. The few capital ships fielded by Hitler were mainly showpieces. Bismarck and Tirpitz could have slugged it out with the Royal Navy in theory; in practice even they were used mainly in anti-convoy duty; in reality they were in peril even riding at anchor because of the Royal Air Force, on the edge of survival at all times at sea because they had to run past the British Isles just to get into the Atlantic. These two battleships had a total of one sea campaign between the two of them; I’m sure most here are familiar with the story.
The real power of the Kriegsmarine was in the U-Boat forces. In the early days of the war the Royal Navy was always and everywhere fearful of attack from beneath the waves. This was the only way Germany could challenge Britain at sea. The U-Boats and commerce raiders were the only parts of the Kriegsmarine that had any real success during the war.
And the bomb is the only way Iran can check US power in the Middle East. So TPTB stoke fears of a new “missile gap” which is just as ludicrous as we discovered it was during the Cold War. The navy stopped flying F-14s about six years ago because they were plagued with stress fatigue problems and needed something like seven maintenance hours for every hour of flight time. Iranian F-14s have been without support from Grumman since 1979. If any could remain airworthy under combat conditions it would be a miracle.
The reality is Iran fields mostly 50-year-old aviation technology. Most of their air force would be destroyed on the ground by cruise missiles and stealth bombers. The rest would be mopped up by F-22s and F-15s in short order. The Pentagon is positively itching for this kind of conflict. It looks so much better on Fox News than Humvees in twisted flaming heaps and 19-year-olds from Hoboken blown in half on the side of the road.
Amen.
I’d go a lot farther.
Just one ballistic missile submarine holds (IIRC) a dozen missiles, with multiple warheads. This is enough deterrent to give any potential adversary pause.
Maybe keep two.
The aircraft carrier battle groups? Absurd. They are for projecting power, not legitimate defense. Maintain a few squadrons of the state-of-the-art fighters/interceptors you mentioned.
This country could eliminate 75 percent of its “defense” expenditures and be well-defended. It would not be able to “intervene” here and “regime change” there. Which is precisely the object. Or ought to be the object.
More than EBT and corporate bail outs, this country is broke and becoming a police state because of the “defense” industry.
I know… I know.. I am an enemy of freedom. Etc.
Eric-
Ohio-class missile subs can carry up to 24 missiles with up to twelve warheads each. Some have been converted to carry Tomahawk missiles and can be armed with 154 of these. I think most of these are conventional but they can be nuclear-tipped. The military admits I think 2,000 or so nuclear warheads; these subs account for about half of that arsenal.
Most of these submarines are based in Washington state; the balance at Kings Bay, Georgia. At one point we had more nuclear warheads in Washington than four of the six acknowledged nuclear armed nations.
This is just one of our nuclear weapons systems, and is the most dynamic. They can disperse from their bases with little notice and once they’re out they all but disappear. It is said that they’re quieter than the ambient noise of the ocean.
In light of this, Clover and the rest of the cowering masses’ notion that Iran poses a first-strike threat to US soil is patently absurd. The US forces in the Middle East may be a different story, but of course we all know there’s an easy solution to that.
Withdrawal!
People are beyond ignorant about the military.I go insane when I hear “Obama’s gutting the military”, how stupid can you be to believe that?They actually think someone could invade us.I ask these people how would that be possible and they can never answer,just saying it could happen.Now they can’t wait to go to war with Iran.What do these idiots think will happen to gas prices if that happens,seeing as that is about the only thing that bothers Americans.
Two lines of propaganda especially frost me. The first is that military spending = defense spending. As pointed out in some posts above, that just ain’t so. Much (most?) of our military spending has nothing to do with defending the country. It’s used to project power abroad, usually to advance the interests of major corporations. That’s just how fascist governments work.
The second strand is even more egregious. We’re told that Iran is enriching uranium, and left to conclude that that is an ominous development. The fact is that, when mined, uranium is very much diluted. In order to use it to produce nuclear power, it must be enriched to the point where it constitutes about 20% of the sample. As a signatory of the NNPT, Iran is perfectly within its rights under international law to enrich its uranium to that point.
In order to enrich uranium sufficiently to make it weapons grade, it has to constitute about 90% of the sample. Is Iran enriching its uranium to 20% or 90%? This is one of the things that inspectors can tell in about half a heartbeat.
What gets me is that boobus americanus (in H.L. Mencken’s great phrase) hears that they are enriching uranium and automatically believes that they are building a bomb. Another fine example of the effects of the dumbing down of the American public.
I think of all the things there are with the the boobus and reporting and everything else what really gets me the most is the use of “us” and “we”.
The government does things, “we” don’t. “We” weren’t even asked.
IMO only those in government office or employment should be using those terms for what is done by government.
The most important part of the con is that people don’t realize that the rulers and the people are two different things. Not only for the USA but for other nations.
Orwell, of course, understood the subtlety of semantics; how usage alters consciousness. Getting the average person to use (and accept) “we” should or “we” need was a brilliant stroke for the controllers.
Other examples:
The substitution of “democracy” for “republic.”
“President” for “premier” or “leader.”
Geez, he’s even more of an ignorant dipshit than I imagined.
Spoiler alert. I dislike clovers. I dislike men who wear a badge who lie about what wearing a badge really means.
Clovers love servitude. Clovers love Badgers. Badgers love shiny medals for valor. Badgers love to wear the dried purple hearts of their enemies on their chest. They make necklaces of the teeth they knock out. Badgers love war porn.
Badger love to badger you for doing things they don’t like. Badgers enjoy striking you with blunt and sharp things. Badgers like to threaten you with striking. Badgers love to live a gladiator life with vital tissue and flesh flecks of mundanes all over their shiny badges.
That is the service a badger provides.
Badgers love to watch old footage of Hiroshima schoolchildren fleeing, and relive their atrocity in High Def 5D Surround sound, smell, sight, touch, and taste.
Clovers are dependent on badgers. They find it heroic, the brave war porn actors, who make the world a war porn shoot.
Clovers love badgers. Both love bronze headed Hiroshima school girls. The survivors who only a flash ago, were beautiful school girls. Now these innocents have wisps of singed hair on their bronze bald heads, and no one to cry to their mothers are dead. Their fathers long ago taken in conscription to the orders of the yellow badge of the emperor.
Arise from your sleeping stupor clovers. Badgers are not heroes. Badgers are the worst men in the world, the ones who turn evil intentions into actual evil events and actions.
Clovers are also obtuse and incoherent. I enjoy a good debate – with someone who accepts the ground rules: facts and logic; accepts points made/offers counterpoints based on fact/logic. With Clovers, it’s an endless effusion of feelings and non sequiturs; of conceptual blank-outs and refusal to acknowledge principles or points made. They just skip, repeat, sidestep and emote.
They also refuse to acknowledge lack of knowledge; or defer to someone with objectively greater knowledge/experience. They always know everything about everything and feel no shame lecturing people who do know things they don’t. Our Clover has lectured pilots about flying; engineers about engineering; trained drivers with racing licenses and track time about driving. There s literally no subject on which Clover doesn’t regard himself as expert – and more expert than anyone else.
He’s insufferable – intolerable.
I figured we need a breather – I do, at least.
So he’s been thrown in the woods.
Dang, I KNEW today was gonna be a good day!
Please tell me this is some sick April Fools joke!?
Why should I (or anyone else) be forced to bankroll this boondoggle?
IMO the cost does not outweigh the benefit. If cost was no object then why are cars not built to NASCAR standards?
If only one idiot can be saved.
Clover would argue that… but I’ve flushed him down the poop shoot.
It’s not a joke. It’s an idea I thought died over a decade ago.
No, Mithrandir, it is not an April Fools joke. The 2013 Miata has the same set-up. All new designs will feature this….All a bunch of unnecessary complexity for little/no gain, and a lot of expense.
Blame it on the Tenth Amendment and cowardly/afraid citizens, and the worthless snakes we send to congress.
And so it goes……….
Vote Third party, and never look back.
It’s just an airbag…what exactly are they expecting to happen here? If I strap a mattress to the front of my van and plow into a person at 40MPH, I think it’s safe to say the mattress won’t make a LOT of difference to the person’s injuries, being suddenly hit with several G’s of accelleration, bounced down th road, ran over partially, etc.
So they are making the car more expensive and as you pointed out, blinding the driver in the process. all to gain virtually nothing. Great plan, Volvo! Thought this one through pretty good.
Of course, they can also charge an extra $$$ for the cars so equipped. So perhaps they did think it through!