The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
Last month, I illustrated the stupidity of our auto engineers in their zeal to make all new cars crushable and become total losses whenever they suffer from minor bumps and bruises. I also illustrated a solution to this insanity, and I’m praying that at least a few engineers in the right places will wise up and take action.
But that is not the only engineering blunder with our cars today. They are also overloaded with gross excesses of explosive air bags—sometimes with as many as 10 or possibly more. Can anybody even consider how dangerous they can be and how much they add to the price of a car? Can you even imagine how much it costs to clean up and repair the resulting messes that erupt after minor fender benders? How much good do they really do? And HOW MUCH HARM?
And why do all of the air bags have to go off when only the driver, or the driver and only one passenger are inside? Has anybody ever thought about installing a switch under each seat that has to be closed under a passenger’s weight before its air bag goes off? NOPE!
WHO concocted these brain-dead contraptions? Did he even think about their dangers? Did he understand anything about economics? Did anybody ever teach him the law of dimishing returns? And if you are a government goon who enforces this crap, the DOGE should fire you immediately and dock every last nickel of your paycheck.
Do we really need these abominations? For nearly everybody, the answer is NO! All cars today are equipped with seat belts. If you buckle up, you don’t need an air bag. If you neglect to buckle up, that’s the risk you take. Don’t expect the government to penalize innocent people to pay you for your foolhardiness.
Air bags can be especially dangerous for children. Most cars carry stern warnings on their windshield visors to strap small children in rear-facing seats to at least partially protect them whenever one or more of these bombs explode.
And also, for die-hard safety fanatics, INSTEAD of air bags, we could install RADAR devices and cameras to detect oncoming vehicles and obstructions to automatically apply braking or evasive action to PREVENT a collision in the first place. Many Tesla vehicles already have this feature.
Air bags in automobiles started slowly about the mid 1970’s, but they were not widely accepted. Instead of becoming a safety feature, they actually CAUSED injuries and even deaths. In 1973, a fleet of experimental GM vehicles equipped with air bags suffered seven fatalities.
Even after technical developments, acceptances during the following two decades, for obvious reasons, were very slow. Who would want a safety device that injures and kills people? Why wasn’t the idea scrapped outright?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Automakers and government meddlers continued experimentation and finally concluded that the most vulnerable spot in a car was the front passenger seat, where its occupant could be thrown into the windshield during a collision—IF he failed to fasten his seat belt. That aroused some makers to install an air bag in that location.
But air bags anywhere else do little to prevent injuries and deaths. The steering wheel usually prevents the driver from hitting the windshield. Back seat passengers would strike the padded backs of the front seats. Inexpensive seat belts are ample here. Air bags are a gross, expensive overkill. They are far beyond the limit of the law of diminishing returns.
In 1998, government goons imposed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which mandated that all passenger cars and light trucks built after September 1 be equipped with driver and front passenger air bags. By 1999, car shoppers found it difficult to save that money with a new mass market car without them. In 2024 US dollars, they cost $1879 each.
And finally, in later years, government mandates literally went “hog wild” and imposed thousands of dollars worth of excessive air bags about wherever they could place them.
There are some types of accidents where air bags are always utterly useless. In a collision with a semi truck’s trailer, a car can easily “underride” it and strike the driver and passengers right on their heads, decapitating them.
The pipe dream of making our highways totally fail-safe is just that. It is impossible. Every time we step outside, we take a minuscle risk of getting injured or killed by ways we can’t even imagine. Life has always been that way. It will not change. We have to live with it. But our lives will always be far better when government nannies and do-gooders get out of the way and let free market innovations solve these problems without outside interference.
But as years went by, common sense went straight out the window. Government goons kept concocting and enforcing more and more extreme idiotic abominations only crazy bureaucrats could imagine.
The DOGE has the duty to eliminate waste and minimize reckless spending. But its most important duty is to exercise its TOP PRIORITY. It must do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to STOP GOVERNMENT ABUSE AND MANDATES.
The United States of America were founded upon INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY. All people have a sacrosanct RIGHT to choose how they live, including what risks to take in everyday life. We have the right to CHOOSE what cars to buy and drive. That includes the right to choose the options we want on them. That also includes the right to REJECT any features or options we don’t want—anything we deem to be too expensive or unnessesary, or even dangerous—like air bags. Likewise, all automakers have the right to build cars that the people want, NOT what the government wants. Numerous Americans, especially low and middle income workers, want simple, efficient, dependable, inexpensive, bare bones, practical vehicles WITHOUT gimmicks imposed by government. That includes air bags. ALL automakers should be ALLOWED to build cars and trucks without them. If a buyer wants these bombs in his car, fine. Get them. But if he doesn’t want them, he should also have that choice. Nobody, but NOOOOBODY should FORCE anybody to buy crap he doesn’t want.
If you want to shell out $18,790 EXTRA for up to 10 of these dangerous explosive devices at $1879 each on your new car, knock yourself out. BUT if you are thrifty-minded, feel safer without them, and want to save that money for higher priorities, you deserve the option to get one with NO air bags—with NO back talk from a nosey government nanny or a greedy auto dealership.
“But most people don’t want cars like that.” WRONG! They do. Look at the Toyota HiLux and IMV Zero—the most practical and widely sold vehicles in the entire world. They outsell everything else, EXCEPT here in the “free country” of America, where they are prohibited by government decrees.
SOURCE
1. Airbag, Wikipedia.
THE VIEWS OF SUBMITTED EDITORIALS MAY NOT BE THE EXPRESS VIEWS OF THE ALABAMA GAZETTE.
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