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JaccoW t1_is9qvld wrote

Maybe but the issue was that moisture got inside the inflator, making it unstable and explode when activated.

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Tamariniak t1_isa5z6e wrote

That's what the article says it was. Also supposedly exploded with an unaccounted-for amount of force, shredding the metal canister and flinging the shreds out at the person's face.

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Robot_Tanlines t1_is9s4n9 wrote

I’m sure you are still way safer with it on and the possibility of it cutting your throat then having nothing but steering wheel to cushion your head. If the fatalities were that common it would have happened much sooner than 8 years after the 2001 Accord came out. It’s obviously still dangerous to possibly have that issue, but considering how many cars they produced it only effected a small percent of them.

Edit: Downvote if you want, but I have no clue why. Please enlighten me why my opinion is wrong. It killed 24 people over 10 plus years with at least 19.4M airbags effected, that number is minuscule. I’m not saying that the faulty airbags are good enough, I’m just saying you are safer with this airbag that is faulty than disconnecting it as the person above me said.

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wheredMyArmourGo t1_isah5p9 wrote

It took 8 years because the problem with it was the degradation of the parts. Not that they were faulty from the start. And there were much more injuries, just because they didn’t all die doesn’t mean the airbag wasn’t extremely dangerous. Not all crashes are fatal but that doesn’t mean they were better off with a faulty safety feature. The fact that anyone died means they’re not better off with a faulty airbag that might slash your major arteries or maybe “just” further injure you.

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Robot_Tanlines t1_isakpw8 wrote

Here is a more recent article than the 19.4M cited before, it’s from September 2021.

“Through various announcements, the recall has grown to include 67 million airbags from more than 42 million vehicles in the U.S.” “To date, there have been 19 deaths and more than 400 injuries because this problem in the U.S. Worldwide, NHTSA reports that there have been at least 27 deaths.”

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/takata-airbag-recall-everything-you-need-to-know-a1060713669/

Putting all of the casualties together the odds of being injured are 0.00064%, that number is insanely small. If there is that chance the airbag will randomly kill you but a 30% increased chance of it saving your life or prevent major injury in a serious accident than you are better off with it than without.

> The fact that anyone died means they’re not better off with a faulty airbag that might slash your major arteries or maybe “just” further injure you.

That’s not how statistics work, when dealing with 64M airbags did they save more people than they harmed, based on all the data on air bags they saved more people. Different article I read this morning said 2,750 peoples lives were saved in the US by airbags in 2016 alone, that’s a hundred times more people saved in a year than faulty airbags killed in the 20ish years of the issue. I’m not saying the company shouldn’t recall them, I’m just saying have a faulty airbag is better than no airbag and the numbers back that up.

Are you an antivaxxer? There is an incredibly small chance the Covid vaccine can kill you, like any vaccine, but the odds are so insanely low that it’s worth the risks. There will always be at least one person who will die from it that wouldn’t have anyway and that’s just the odds that we live with when we are talking about billions of people. We are absolutely safer with the vaccine and losing a few people than we are with horrible viruses running around unchecked.

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wampa-stompa t1_is9st0q wrote

My first car had no airbag, from the factory. I'd have looked into disabling it until they had a fix

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RocksToRockets t1_is9wc5e wrote

I mean- if you are wearing a seatbelt I would rather just deal with the wheel. Airbags are relatively new when it comes to driving. I think you just perceive no airbag as a much bigger threat because you are young.

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Robot_Tanlines t1_is9yvuy wrote

Early windshields were made of glass so in accidents they cut people to shreds, just because safety glasses is newer doesn’t make it less safe. We are is much safer in cars than we ever were before, airbags save lives. Just like seatbelts, there’s always a person who says well not wearing one saved my life, but they are the exception not the rule.

“Front airbags reduce driver fatalities in frontal crashes by 29 percent and fatalities of front-seat passengers age 13 and older by 32 percent”

https://www.iihs.org/topics/airbags

That means you are significantly safer with airbags. The deaths from this recall are tragic, but they are a very small number one, the vast majority of people with those cars were safer with faulty airbags than without.

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celo753 t1_isa3l0z wrote

It’s also not just fatalities that matter, it reduces the risk of serious injury too. I’d rather hit an airbag and break an arm than hit the steering wheel or glovebox and break 9 different bones and have my face smashed in, even if I don’t die in either situation.

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Robot_Tanlines t1_isahbuy wrote

Yup, Reddit never ceases to amaze me, show them actual evidence and they are just like nah. The faulty airbags killed 1 in a million people, there is no way that airbags didn’t save more than 1 person per million. Oh where I came up with that 19.4M number was from an old article, it has grown to 67M with 27 confirmed fatalities and 400 injuries. There is absolutely no way people are safer with a disconnected airbag than one of the ones being recalled.

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