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