No, it is specifically not like that. It's like saying that, in any situation where you need a seatbelt, you also need airbags and a lack of ready-to-become-shrapnel sharp objects scattered around the inside of the vehicle.
>Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.
have no idea why are you saying that. Probably you just _think_ so, and you've probably never been in a "relatively minor" accident, let alone in the accident where the car flies off the road and violently turns in every possible direction while flying and skidding upon landing. I was. Thanks God and Federal regulation authority for the seat belts mandate. Fixed by the seat belts it was like the scariest, very high-G, twists and turns, amusement park ride. Without the seat belts even the survival in that situation would hardly be possible, let alone avoiding heavy traumas and disability. The airbags didn't deploy for whatever reason.
> Air bags have saved more lives than safety belts, haven't they?
That depends on how you count: no life saved by an airbag would be saved without airbag AND safety belt. An airbag alone saves no lives.
And I still doubt the airbag+belt combination made a bigger dent in the statistic than the introduction of the safety belt did (Although it's hard to compare due to completely different time periods)
> Air bags have saved more lives than safety belts, haven't they
Not by a long shot - seat belts reduce the chance of death by 60-70% across all crashes. Airbags reduce the chance of death by 15% in frontal collisions, and very little for other types[1]. The airbag isn’t going to much good if you’ve been ejected from the car.
> Seatbelts increase the chance of remaining in your seat - and thus in at least partial control of your vehicle - mid-accident.
Is this just speculation? Without a seatbelt you get thrown from the vehicle when you hit something, but by that point it's by definition already too late to avoid it, and then you're just in butterfly effect land. Maybe having someone in the car helps because they keep their foot on the brake and the car stays where it is, maybe that's bad because another car that hits the smashed car has to absorb a harder impact when the other car is held in place by the brake instead of being pushed away.
> Wikipedia has references suggesting it's done more good than harm on at least seatbelt wearing rates
This is not the right comparison because the thing to be compared is not seatbelt use prior to the campaign, it's seatbelt use under a different seatbelt campaign, e.g. one that emphasizes the risks to your life rather than the risk of a ticket -- which may actually be more effective regardless, because dying is a lot worse than getting fined.
> This doesn't measure anger induced traffic accidents, but anyone that easily angered on a regular basis will probably find some excuse to be angry no matter what if you ask me.
That's just a rationalization. Volatile individuals exist. Removing triggers for their volatility while they're engaged in a dangerous activity is an advantage.
> This must once have been true of seatbelts too, before all the experiments that were done with dummies and cadavers.
Surprisingly enough, it was true of airbags after those experiments too: in the late '80s and early '90s, it was noticed that the airbag fatality rate was shockingly high compared to what had been projected, so they went back to the drawing boards and revised the designs. A quote from a RAND study on autonomous cars:
> This tension produced "a standoff between airbag proponents and the automakers that resulted in contentious debates, several court cases, and very few airbags" (Wetmore, 2004, p. 391). In 1984, the US DOT passed a ruling requiring vehicles manufactured after 1990 to be equipped with some type of passive restraint system (e.g., air bags or automatic seat belts) (Wetmore, 2004); in 1991, this regulation was amended to require air bags in particular in all automobiles by 1999 (Pub. L. No. 102-240). The mandatory performance standards in the FMVSS further required air bags to protect an unbelted adult male passenger in a head-on, 30 mph crash. Additionally, by 1990, the situation had changed dramatically, and air bags were being installed in millions of cars. Wetmore attributes this development to three factors: First, technology had advanced to enable air-bag deployment with high reliability; second, public attitude shifted, and safety features became important factors for consumers; and, third, air bags were no longer being promoted as replacements but as supplements to seat belts, which resulted in a sharing of responsibility between manufacturers and passengers and lessened manufacturers' potential liability (Wetmore, 2004). While air bags have certainly saved many lives, they have not lived up to original expectations: In 1977, NHTSA estimated that air bags would save on the order of 9,000 lives per year and based its regulations on these expectations (Thompson, Segui-Gomez, and Graham, 2002). Today, by contrast, NHTSA calculates that air bags saved 8,369 lives in the 14 years between 1987 and 2001 (Glassbrenner, undated). Simultaneously, however, it has become evident that air bags pose a risk to many passengers, particularly smaller passengers, such as women of small stature, the elderly, and children. NHTSA (2008a) determined that 291 deaths were caused by air bags between 1990 and July 2008, primarily due to the extreme force that is necessary to meet the performance standard of protecting the unbelted adult male passenger. Houston and Richardson (2000) describe the strong reaction to these losses and a backlash against air bags, despite their benefits. The unintended consequences of air bags have led to technology developments and changes to standards and regulations. Between 1997 and 2000, NHTSA developed a number of interim solutions designed to reduce the risks of air bags, including on-off switches and deployment with less force (Ho, 2006). Simultaneously, safer air bags, called advanced air bags, were developed that deploy with a force tailored to the occupant by taking into account the seat position, belt usage, occupant weight, and other factors. In 2000, NHTSA mandated that the introduction of these advanced air bags begin in 2003 and that, by 2006, every new passenger vehicle would include these safety measures (NHTSA, 2000).
> In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.
Great, then there's nothing to worry about... but if it is a serious crash, you'll wish you had an airbag to bounce off of rather than a hard steering column, dashboard and windshield.
> Not wearing a seatbelt can put others at risk for injury liability.
Wow, I'm surprised that has never occurred to me before. I guess that to most people, such as myself, the trade-off is so obvious from a personal safety point of view that we don't think too deeply over it. This is a great point.
> 2. Air bags are designed to work with seat belts, not replace them
but accurate regarding the effects of not wearing one:
> If you don’t wear your seat belt, you could be thrown into a rapidly opening frontal air bag. Such force could injure or even kill you.
Quite a few injuries in low speed crashes are _caused_ by air bag deployment even when you are wearing your seat belt.[1]
This is not to detract from the fact that in high speed or high force crashes, the airbag may be the thing that lets you survive ... assuming you are wearing a seatbelt.
> There is nothing inherently safer about using seatbelts per se.
In fact seatbelts can kill you. I have a friend that went out with his has car and a friend 20 years ago, they did drink too much and had an accident. He was expelled by the acceleration the car had(because he used no seatbelt) while his friend burned alive inside the car.
When assessing safety we can’t argue from anecdote like this. Getting ejected from a car is almost always fatal. Accidents involving fire are pretty rare. Your anecdote is so far from a norm as to be a ridiculous example to assess the safety of seat belts.
And I actually know a guy who slept on the wheel, feel sideways into the passenger's seat, then crashed into a tree. The steering wheel crushed the driver's seat where his chest had been. He would presumably die if he wore the seatbelt.
Of course, both seatbelts and airbags save many more lives than they take.
You shouldn't. 16% of accidents are pedestrians. 8% are motorcyclists. 40% of accidents involve excessive speed or drugs and alcohol.
Accidents aren't a fungible item you can do this with.
> bag on the passenger seat since there's no software option to disable the beeping.
There is in the US for the rear seats. Additionally, you can just leave the belt always clicked in and just sit on top of them. There aren't many great technological solutions to human behavior.
Exactly, but some of them are designed to be paired with a seat belt - I've heard that airbags can make things worse if you don't buckle up.
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