No airbag vs 30-year-old airbag?

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Tranter156@reddit

Takata was famous for airbags that gave you free shrapnel with each use. I thought it was mainly a heat problem that killed people in tropical areas but not sure of details. I try to never drive a car more than ten years old just to avoid old forgotten recalls.

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HotmailsInYourArea@reddit

You can call any dealership, give them the VIN, and they’ll tell you if it has recalls or not

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Ordinary-Trade8323@reddit

Think about it like this. If you get into an accident and worst case Ontario the airbag going off fucks your face up more than normal, or your face gets fucked up by a steering wheel. It's more likely than not that your airbag is fine.

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HotmailsInYourArea@reddit

Those damn Canadians!! Knew I couldn’t trust them xD

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Dinglebutterball@reddit

I dislike airbags. Just because the cars been hit doesn’t necessarily mean I’m done driving it… I’d rather not have the steering wheel explode in the middle of trying to avoid death.

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HotmailsInYourArea@reddit

They’re still drivable, and the airbag is only inflated momentarily.

If you hit something hard enough for the airbag to deploy, you’re likely stopped anyway

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Wne1980@reddit

That’s hard to say. So far I’ve left the airbags working. There isn’t really much reason to think they’re a problem. After all, you trust all the rest of the 30+ year old electronics. If you do remove it, you might need to alter the seatbelts. I know on my Miata it has an “energy loop” you need to get rid of

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NuclearPopTarts@reddit

Plenty of cars had a Takata airbag recall. You can check to see if the recall was required - and done - on your car.

I don’t worry much about old airbags failing to go off. Explosives can last a long time. (Old World War II bombs can still go off at construction sites.)

Now with modern cars you have to worry about counterfeit airbags that can be even more dangerous than the old Takatas…

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ChemistRemote7182@reddit

Explosives often become unstable with age, its not that they won't go off but that they might go off if you breath in their diection

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godzillabobber@reddit

World War 1 munitions are still lethal. There are entire battlefields off limits 110 years after the fact.

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Blu_yello_husky@reddit

I pull the fises on any car i buy with an airbag. Those crusty old bags will do more harm than good when they go off, if they go off at all.

And then there's always the possibility that the impact switch gets tripped by a major shift in the body, like hitting a large pothole or going over rail road tracks. Then you've got the air bag going off, breaking your nose and causing an accident, likely totaling the car if not killing someone. Yeah. No thanks. Ill take my chances with just a seatbelt

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GrannyLow@reddit

Are you basing this on anything, or are you just making things up?

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Blu_yello_husky@reddit

I know someone who had the airbag go off on him in his 1995 cadillac after he went over a pothole. He got bruises and abrasions on his face from the dried out old airbag material, and it also ruined his dash because the pad that holds the airbag in didnt smoothly break away from the rest of the vinyl. The dash had a huge hole ripped in it afterwards and he couldn't find a replacement.

I will never trust airbags in any old car. Especially mine because my sound system is loud enough to rattle the lisence plate and hubcaps, its definitely loud enough to break the switch trip wire fir the airbag. Last thing I need.

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The_Shepherds_2019@reddit

I have a crusty old 1991 Aussie built Capri in the humid Appalachian mountains. I do not trust those crash sensors, I suspect one good bump and my airbag would go off while cruising.

Unplugged. The car is the size of a NA Miata, if I get into an actual accident that airbag is like a bandaid on a gunshot wound anyways, assuming it even works

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Whack-a-Moole@reddit

I've never heard of an airbag going bad.

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Late-Button-6559@reddit

Takata a new word to you?

To OP: I’d take an old airbag vs none.

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optimiism@reddit

Those were bad when new

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GeckoDeLimon@reddit

Sure is. Much harder to take through the drive-thru at Wendy's tho.

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splynneuqu@reddit

If you have all that then u go through the drive thru sideways.

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squirrel8296@reddit

They don’t go bad per se, but manufacturers generally recommend to have them inspected and replaced in the 10-15 year range just to be on the safe side.

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Ok-Armadillo-392@reddit

I recently seen an airbag deploy from a 96 dodge ram that had been sitting in a field for a decade.

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Flaky_Ad_3590@reddit

There is a decent statistical study of airbags and collisions made in early 2000's, i recommend reading and understanding it.

Statistics show that seatbelts are more important than airbags BUT airbags often reduce the severity of injuries WHEN used with seatbelts.

So, you are generally ok without airbags. Just use the belts.

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KnifeEdge@reddit

I don't know how an old airbag would be worse other than in efficacy. Can't be worse than not having it with regards to safety... With regards to looks I 100% agree with you

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Much_Box996@reddit

Get rid of the airbag it isn’t a safety risk they are more for unbelted drivers.

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PolizeiW124-Guy@reddit

No, just no.

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miwi81@reddit

Moron

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Shishamylov@reddit

Airbags are designed to work with seatbelts

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Ok_Tax_7128@reddit

I have certainly heard of people hitting something minor and the airbags going off. They got a huge fright and a few bruises but otherwise unharmed. The vehicle was deemed a writeoff because of the expense of sorting the airbags.

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PolizeiW124-Guy@reddit

I was steering a Peugeot 406 coupe off of a small beaver tail truck, as it was low and the angle of the ground and the bed didn’t mix well, the arse of a manager put scaffolding planks down, long story short, I leaned across the car for some to pull the bonnet release(under managers instructions) and a plank flicked up and hit the sill.

Passenger seat side airbag went off next to my head, was deaf for about an hour, burns on the back and side of my neck and a new pair of duds for me.

Car would have been a write off as the seat was leather and the trims were damaged but we had to have the seat re trimmed and panels replaced.

That manager was an arsehole.

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_f00lish_@reddit

In late 2017 my mom got into an accident with her 2001 Toyota Avalon. The whole front end of the car was destroyed, yet the airbags never went off. She was fine aside from some bruising thankfully, but the airbags not detonating was quite concerning. So, in my n=1 experience, they won't randomly deploy, but they also might not deploy when you need them.

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bigdogdame92@reddit

If she was fine then it probably works as intended. The car's front end was designed to crumple and absorb all the impact. Which is why it likely looked dramatic. The airbags only go off when they need to

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No_Lifeguard3650@reddit

its a very specific set of circumstances to allow airbags to deploy. manufacturers spend lots of time and crash tests to set those parameters. sometimes u have a bad wreck but airbags deploying could actually cause more damage. so they only deploy during tested parameters. myself i have had wrecks that bags did not deploy. i was completely fine other than bruising. i figure if things were different or worse they would have.

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trader45nj@reddit

And then there are the advanced cars now that detonate some airbags before the vehicle is hit. Mercedes does this in Tbone type collisions. The sensors detect the other vehicle as it's coming at it.

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ktappe@reddit

My 1990 Legend manual specifically said that the airbag had to be replaced after eight years. Whether or not that was true, I don’t know, but it’s what the manual said.

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bigdogdame92@reddit

I've never really heard about that being an issue. Does that really happen? Air bags deploying out of no where?

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thadiusghostal@reddit (OP)

I’m not necessarily thinking an airbag deploying out of nowhere, just things inside airbags, or parts of the system, aging past a possible vehicle lifecycle the manufacturer may have intended. Metals that might rust, plastics that grow brittle and sharp.

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trader45nj@reddit

Or explosives that change because of humidity and become a lot more powerful. That was Takata. But with hundreds of millions of them, that's the only case that I know of where airbags caused injury as they aged.

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travellering@reddit

It's a possibility, but not from the airbag itself. More the control systems and deterioration of the rest of the car. I have a 94 saab 9000 that had a leaking heater core. One day, driving I heard a bang and smelled gunpowder. Couldn't figure out what had happened at the time, but found out later that it was the passenger side seat belt pretensioner firing off. I was able to figure it out when the drivers side went off a few weeks later. Bang, and suddenly my seat belt is trying to choke me.

I found out the Supplemental Restraint System ecu was in the center console just below the heater core. A few months of water and glycol buildup on the terminals and circuit boards and it started shorting. I immediately pulled the fuse for the system, since the airbags were the only thing left that hadn't gone off yet....

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Cultural_Chemical240@reddit

In high school (2013) I was in a pretty hard hit front end collision in my 17 year old GMC Jimmy and my air bag didn’t even deploy. Lol.

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Material_Case_5433@reddit

I just t boned my 1996 Chevy Silverado into a van running 45mph and the airbag saved my face for sure. Crazy because I use to wonder the same thing. Would this thing actually work if I needed it? It burned my face and arm a little but that was it.

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Qtrfoil@reddit

Mine's 35 years-old. I asked my buddy, an ex-GM engineer the same question. He think's they're fairly stable and more likely to work than not, and less likely to kill me than the steering column.

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Due_Platform_5327@reddit

I have a hard time believing that the propellant in a 30 year old airbag still works. Likely in a crash it would never deploy so basically you already have a no airbag vehicle.

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Valkanaa@reddit

Supposedly all the old Takata bags are bad (recalled) and that's a lot of them.

I don't see an issue if you're wearing your belt. Either it will deploy or it won't.

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HumbleLife69@reddit

This is some big brain energy

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UnluckyEmployer275@reddit

Not airbags, maybe no seatbelts depending on the car

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boxerbroscars@reddit

if the airbag is already there, I'm fine with it. My 1996 truck has a driver's airbag and it isn't a 5 minute swap to put in a non-airbag steering wheel so I'll leave it. On my older cars that never had airbags, I accept I will get hurt in minor accidents