[LMB] Airbags OT:

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louann Miller" <louann at millerdome.com>


> Cheryl Howie wrote:
>> On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:50:56 -0900 Peter Newman <pnewman at gci.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Why can't airbags have a weight sensor? The more the
>>> person sitting in the seat weighs, than the faster and
>>> harder they deploy?
>>
>> My 2006 Mazda5 does have a weight sensor in the front
>> passenger seat.  It's not as complex as what you describe,
>> though; it just turns the airbag off if the passenger
>> weighs less than a certain amount.  It gives the weight
>> in my manual, I think, but I haven't got that handy to
>> check right now.

> My husband's tiny little commuter car (Scion Za) also has this feature.
> I don't know what the weight limit is either.
>
> Our household was using seat belts routinely way back in my childhood in
> the 1970's. Probably because my dad was an auto accident investigator
> for an insurance company in the 1960's.

There was a lot of discussion in the news some months back about the 
sensors' settings--the requirement imposed was to stop substantiative damage 
to a large male not using a seatbelt... that those settings KILL women my 
size, apparently wasn't considered important enough as design consideration 
to occur... (that is, the requirement got set WITHOUT bothering to pay ANY 
attention to the EXISTENCE of small women, much less as -drivers-.... It's 
sort of like all those ancient jokes about female drivers-- the REASON why 
there were so many of those jokes, is that the sight lines out of cars were 
so bad for anyone -short-, and female humans tend to be ON THE AVERAGE 
several inches shorter than male humans--and the car designers were almost 
universally -male- designing for -themselves- and THEIR sight lines.  The 
same thing got applied by the MALES who made up the rules for 
airbags--stopping significant damage to an overweight typical large US male 
who's NOT wearing a seatbelt and is sitting with the seat pushed all the way 
back, requires enough an airbag expanding with enough force close-in that a 
small child, or woman, can die from the effects.   Force involved an inverse 
square law--that airbag to stop the 280 pound male who's sitting  two feet 
back from the steering wheel, has a lot more force when it's still inflating 
where MY face is only a few INCHES from the @(^(@# steering wheel.. the 
airbag's s designed to stop the large male TORSO, and THAT is where MY FACE 
is....

Gender and size and shape bigot ENDEMIC!