From: utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!teklabs!ucbcad!ARPAVAX:CSVAX:npois!npoiv!alice!physics!gill@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.auto Title: Cool air on bags Article-I.D.: physics.130 Posted: Mon Aug 16 12:01:56 1982 Received: Fri Aug 20 02:55:43 1982 After receiving some mail from some of the anti air baggers, I must say they have a very strong point: The "right" way to solve the safety problem is to make not wearing safety belts equivalent to relieving anyone of liability for your personal injury. I see three problems with this (one of which was pointed out by rabbit!ark): It is probably impossible to determine what sort of injuries the negligent driver would sustain had he worn seat belts. We might want the other party to be liable for some personal injury (of course, totally freeing him may be a good lesson to the non seat belt wearer, but it is probably overly cruel punishment). In many collisions, the injured manages to leave the car or otherwise unseat himself. The determination of whether he gets to sue the other guy would be determined by his telling the cops "I was wearing seatbelts." I somehow don't think this will work ... The cost of health care is mostly covered by health insurance nowadays. If you can't sue because you were negligent, I don't think the present health insurance companies will refuse to pay for such accidents. If you fall on a driveway you forgot to plow, do the health insurance companies refuse to pay? After mulling the issue over some more, I have decided that I wouldn't personally want them over seat belts. I always wear seat belts and now believe them to be more effective and safer than air bags. Nevertheless, I think some sort of mandatory safety mechanism is needed. Whether its implemented through air bags or changes in isurance claim law doesn't matter, though I think the air bags are a more sure fire method (they don't have the above problems). How about providing cars with both air bags and seat belts? Whenever the seat belt is not in use, the air bags are enabled. Of course, that would make it possible to turn them off by sitting on your belts, but it probably be possible to disable them anyway. The reason I don't think too many people would do this (as opposed to what they did to disable buzzers and so forth) is that not wearing your belt wouldn't cause immediate annoyance, just increased risk of ear damage (I still haven't seen any references to who proved this true). Comments? Gill Pratt alice!gill OR gill@mc