Ermmmm.... some Detroit cars already cost close enough to $40,000 here in
the west....

As for your airbag idea.... mayhaps you might back up a step and examine
your words. Not only is the idea ludicrous but, if you had your way with it,
the idea is fraught with it's own dangers. Only one body can occupy a
particular space at one time... your idea would have several breathing
projectiles vying for the same turf.

At what point does life safety (or the lack of it) become part of the "cost
of doing business"? I'll bet my boss could have save a few hundred bucks on
my hoist at work if he'd gotten it without safety dogs. Imagine how much
cheaper an airliner would be without redundant hydraulics. Imagine how much
lower your taxes would be without a fire department.... C'mon, Rich...
You're trying to ascribe a finite price for a human life.... what is that
price? Will there be employee discount days? How about frequent flier miles?
You look in the mirror right now and tell yourself exactly how much money we
can save if your ideas get you killed in some accident..... in this case, a
car colliding with a pedestrian..... and we all know that cars never, ever
collide with pedestrians, right?

We're getting into apples and oranges, here, Spike. Allowing old folks to
die a natural death has little to do with the subject at hand... and that is
preventing injury, no matter what the age. One one hand we have an
extrordinary medical technique, on the other we have a simple design
change...

When I was a kid, my folks supervised my activities.... I wasn't dumped in
front of a TV set to fend for myself nor was I allowed to roam the streets.
If I was bad, our neighbour was allowed to give my rump a reminder.... a
reminder that would be repeated at home for embarrassing my folks. I fell
down, I got cuts, I got scrapes and I broke bones..... Not only was this
part of growing up, but my system wasn't conditioned by hour after hour of
sedntary television supervision and my youthful self had some innate healing
power.

Now to give our heads a real good shake and get back to the reality of it
all..... what pissed Rich off was a hood designed to crumple... a hood that
absorbed shock instead of transferring it to an unwary pedestrian. Has this
hood been suddenly been made of s super-precious metal like "unobtanium"?
Does this hood have some mystical power that requires us to sacrifice bales
of money in the full moons light? Is this hood made of millions of hand
crafted little parts joined by a watchmakers touch? I don't think so.....

In the grand scheme of things, vehicle prices have been spiraling upwards
steadily.... I an recall a time when a "full load" car had power steering
and brakes and a radio. Consumer demands have added a host of toys...
premium sound systems, GPS, satelltie radio, entertainment systems, AC,
power seats, sunroof, moonroof, heated seats, climate control seats,.. I can
keep on going.... The biggest, single cost in the prouction of each and
every automobile is.... <drum roll, please>.... employee benefits...

Redesigning the hood structure to absorb impact may have cost several
hundred thousand dollars to achieve...An expense like this can be amortized
over how many units?  Dealers order in units with a "decent"load of toys....
more than most consumers would consider ordering. Faced with a buying
decision, a consumer will likely take an "off the shelf" unit with more toys
than he/she wanted rather than wait 3 or 4 months for a "stripped down"
version. After they get a taste for the toys, you can almost guarranty that
they will be included in the next purchase.

Rich has a history of going off half cocked....  for my own sanity, I have
to draw the line at any thought that we can put a dollar value to a human
life (FWIW, I hope euthanasia is acceptable when I get to "that" point). As
far as "the hood" is concerned, let us remeber that there will be more than
one victim.... The "bouncee" will survive nearly unscathed ... the "bouncer"
(and his passengers) wont have to feel the remorse over causing dire harm or
death.... whether the incident would be deemed preventable or not.

The world has changed a LOT since I was a young'un.... technology has
surpassed even the dreams of Popular Science and Popular Mechanix of the
late 50s/early 60s. Society itself, however, is going to hell in a
handbasket.....

No argument, BUT, if, as in your loved one's case, the seatbelt is not
used, and additional injuries are sustained, and since the risk was
pre-existing, and thus the risk was taken on a voluntary basis, should
not your insurance rates be higher? The insurance company might even
have justification to refuse you insurance based on the fact that you
might have your wife with you in the car and thus increase the
liability the insurance company might be responsible for. Even if you
told them she would never be in the vehicle with you, the insurance
company would be expected to simply accept your word? Not bloody
likely.

Again, no argument, but how far are we going to take it? If you really
got down to it, we could start by outlawing APVs, MCs, etc, because of
the very high rate of risk in their use. Then we could work on riding
lawnmowers because people are severely injured and killed using them
each year. There are some things which the individual must take
responsibility for.

One example, we used to ride in the backs of pickups all the time...
even stood up looking over the cab and being blasted by the wind.  In
all my life I only experienced one case where someone fell out. I know
it happens, but I never experienced it. Then they pass a safety law
which says nobody can ride in the back unless there is installed
seating with safety belts, or there is a shell (although it's illegal
to ride back there if it's a camper). That's safety in action. Then I
go to an accident scene where the grandparents are in the cab when
they rolled it out into the desert. They are still belted in place
(alive) with the truck on it's side. The shell is nothing but shards
of plywood and tin scattered among the sage and tumbleweeds.
The driver and passenger are taken care of, but, as we are all
leaving, I notice toys scattered among the remnants of the shell. We
all line up and walk through the desert shrubs and find two preteen
girls. The grandparents knew the law. They felt that the girls were
safe and secure in the back under the shell. They had false sense of
security. As the grandfather stated, had he thought they might not be
totally safe, he would have had them in the cab. I didn't bother to
tell him that that would have been illegal since there were only three
seatbelts. The girls did survive, and recovered fully, by the way.

Now, you can say that this is a freak situation which might never be
repeated. But that would violate your initial premise that safety is
paramount no matter the cost.

true, many of the reasons for price rises are consumer demand for
frills, bells and whistles (like a plug for a laptop). But safety does
add to the cost, and eventually, either the frills need to be cut to
make way for safety, or a great many people will no longer be able to
afford to own a vehicle.

Spike
1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok
Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40
16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial
225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be....
Children are obscene but should not be heard
Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

My brother had it.  Luckily, he only lost part of his intestine
and it was brought under control.  Not nice.  
-Rich

That's one of my problems with requiring air bags in ALL vehicles.  If your
wife decides that the disease needs her to not wear a belt, the SRS (per the
warning sticker) MAY cause serious injury or even death, but the belt itself
may cause her the same....  Catch 22?  Now add in the difficulty in finding
someone who will disable the SRS, so that she can "safely" drive without the
seatbelt... Because it would only be acceptable for her to drive with the
SRS disabled, it would need to (for insurance reasons) be functional when
you are in that seat...  Your example touches close to home here, too, we
have a neice with that disease also.  I consider all aspects of life as you
refer to the different diseases- there are lifestyle issues where each of us
should be responsible for our own behavior, and there are collective issues
that each of us should help others with.  My concern is that the BIG
BROTHERs among us are constantly blurring those lines, and the sheeple seem
to like being responsible for less and less, because they don't have nearly
as many choices to make.

Actually, Rich does make a good point here.... my loving bride has suffered
the ravages of Crohns Disease for over 30 years. The same seatbelt that
would save your life or mine, could cause enough internal damage to make the
result unthinkable. Now that we have a vehicle with SRS, the chances are
much smaller... but he chances remain.

For those unfamiliar with CD, I suggest http://www.ccfa.org/
http://qurlyjoe.bu.edu/cduchome.html   http://www.angelfire.com/ga/crohns/
for starters. So many dollars are pledged for a lifestyle disease such as
AIDS... while so little is pledge for a disease that afflicts people much
like the rest of us.

There are those dangers that we cannot mitigate, no matter how we try. That
is not to say that we shouldn't change those that we can....