Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 13:43:51 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Recent Car Talk Shows - re air bags
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Woman friend of mine yesterday ............
95 Ford Escort station wagon ( we call it Escargo )
ran into the back of someone, not badly..........
minor front end damage.
both air bags went off, bruised her bare arms, and made the horn stick on,
even with the key off.
She drove it home that way.........both air bags hanging out, horn
blaring..........hood latch area got bent a little which I fixed in two
minutes.
I guess by 95 they still didn't have 'smart' air bags which deploy less
violently at slower speeds and lower g-forces,
and more forcefully for high speed severe impacts.
Silly that they originally and primarily made air bags for use in severe
high speed crashes.
there is a woman who had her one year old decapitated by a jetta air bag in
a shopping mall parking lot incident.
- that's right, as in killed dead by an air bag in a minor fender bender.
She probably collected 5 million dollars too.
Also........air bags help in certain types of crashes, but not all.
they are getting smarter with side air bags in the head liner and so forth.
Modern cars have about 8 air bags in them sometimes.
But for traditional airbags........
Older ones designed ones for severe frontal collision crashes, won't help
much at all in a roll over crash, as in going off the side of the road and
thrashing around that way.
I'd be surprised if South African vanagons have air bags.
just doesn't seem likely.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Grebneff" <goose1047@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: Recent Car Talk Shows
> Did the South African buses have airbags?
>
> Of course the US gets oversized bags which would be illegal anywhere
> else...
>
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:40 PM, Ryan Alfonso <vangina@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not sure if you guys have been listening, but last week a woman called
>> click
>> and clack to check whether a guy who lives in his '86 westfalia is
>> "dating
>> material" or maybe just a whacko. Pretty funny stuff. Well, that same
>> guy
>> called in THIS week to discuss his van and what it's like living in it.
>> His
>> question was, "can you retrofit an airbag into a vanagon?". Great stuff.
>> Seems those guys get a lot of calls about old VWs, eh?
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew Grebneff
> Dunedin, New Zealand
> Fossil preparator
> Mollusc, Toyota & VW van nut
> Temporarily in Calgary, AB, Canada
> <goose1047@gmail.com>
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