If you were ever taught that when driving you should have your hands on the wheel at “10 and 2”, they changed that lesson for the same reason: airbags would push your arms up and away from your body, breaking your arms or dislocating shoulders.
They now recommend “8 and 4” instead so your elbows are pushed mostly down and back into the seat cushion
They also stopped teaching people to turn the wheel “hand over hand” for the same reason. If your arms are crossed when the airbag goes off it’s a bad time.
Instead, you’re supposed to keep your hands on the bottom half of the wheel, sliding one hand around the wheel in the opposite direction of rotation as the other hand turns the wheel. So if you’re turning right, i.e. rotating the wheel clockwise, you would start with your right hand at 4 and left hand at 8. Then, as your right hand is rotating the wheel clockwise - down and left, from 4 to 6 - slide your left hand from 8 to 6 where it will meet your right hand. Now switch grip so your left hand is rotating the wheel - left and up, from 6 to 8 - while sliding your right hand back to 4 from 6. Repeat.
Ty
Not just break your legs, embed your knees into your skull. Gruesome way to die
Oh this is a great reason I can get my friend to stop scuffing up my glovebox with her shoes.
I do shudder a bit whenever I see someone with their feet on the dashboard.
I unironically would like to disable airbags more because I fear their accidental deployment… classic cars often lack them and plenty of people drive the old cars
Accidental airbag deployment almost never happens. Car crashes happen all the time. Classic cars were death traps, they’re a tiny percentage of cars today which is why they don’t feature highly on death statistics, but you really can’t underestimate the progress that car safety has made over the years - just look at crash test footage.
underestimate
idk I’ve seen some skepticism towards them, for example: “Airbags associated with increased probability of death in accidents, study finds” https://phys.org/news/2005-06-airbags-probability-death-accidents.html
I’d prefer to have the option to manually disable them and would like to have them disabled for myself I’d think
But car safety is tested in practical car crash tests, where we check to see the state of the dummy at the end. These tests are filmed and can be found on YouTube, the progress made is undeniable.
I guess if you wanted to just disable them because of personal beliefs, I don’t see anything wrong with that, but then manufacturers risk liability from people claiming they didn’t know or accidentally disabled it and got hurt.
