By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Airbags are an important safety development that have saved millions of lives, blah blah blah. And sure, the technology has come a long way since the jaw-busting jiffy pops of the 90′s. But you know what? I still don’t trust the darn things. And this video doesn’t help. But that last slow-mo is pretty cool, yeah? Via ThatWillBuffOut.

By Alex Quail

Alex Quail

It’s not very often you see a UK-spec Honda Accord sitting so low on polished split rims. This car is definitely unique! It was at a Honda meet I went to on Sunday, and it caught my eye straight away. I’m not usually one for airbagged cars and tucked wheels, but this looked awesome and held my attention for the majority of my time at the meet! It’s pretty rare to see this shape Accord modified (unless its the Accord Type-R that was available for sale here), and its even rarer to see one in a VIP style. Looking at this car, I’d definitely consider one as my next daily driver (although it wouldn’t be quite as low!). You can find more photos from the meet on JT-Culture.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Want more airbags? Mercedes has ‘em! The weirdest one is the “braking bag.” Here’s how Mercedes describes it in their press release for the new Mercedes ESF 2009 Concept:

Braking Bag:This auxiliary brake accommodated in the vehicle floor is a new type of PRE-SAFE® component. If the sensor system concludes that an impact is unavoidable, the Braking Bag is deployed shortly before the crash and stabilises the car on the road surface by means of a friction coating. The vehicle’s vertical acceleration increases the friction, and helps to decelerate the vehicle before the impact occurs.

Watch the braking bag in action in the video, then read the full press release after the jump.

Continue reading "Mercedes Braking Bag" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Seattle is filled with militant pedestrians. You know the type: they cross the road without looking both ways, without making eye contact. This, combined with a the multitudes of silent Priuses driven by a texting yuppies, is the perfect recipe for mass carnage (my old Mopar has a bunch of pointy things on the grill and fenders specially designed for spearing pedestrians, but I don’t text, and you can hear the Flowmasters from several blocks away). Well now researchers in England have developed a new system that deploys a hood airbag at the base of the windshield. Radar and infrared technology “pre-detect” collisions with unwary pedestrians and inflate the airbags to cushion the blow. Isn’t that nice? Full story at Wired

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Just when you thought today’s cars couldn’t be any more stuffed with airbags, Toyota will be pioneering the first standard backseat jiffypops in one of its smallest vehicles. The JDM version of the iQ will have a central air bag between the rear passengers in what would normally be the middle seat–preventing the kids from knocking into each other during a side collision.  It seems safety’s come a long way since the good old days when my dad strapped my little sister and I into a single seatbelt because his GTO had no rear seat! More at Autopia.

By Ryan Porter

IN-N-OUT Editor

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Chevy HHR but I never see any modified HHR’s. I’ll admit that I’ve never went looking, but when I saw this HHR on CarDomain I got pretty excited. It’s fairly stock, aside from the airbags and custom painted 18s. Congrats to CarDomain member tribalflamemini for stepping out in the HHR, and make sure to stop by his garage and check out all his rides!

I’m not a statistician or an engineer, but something about this Kansas City Star story stinks. Since 1990, 300 people have been killed by improper airbag deployment. That number seems pretty hard to argue with. But now the Kansas Star is reporting that between 2001 and 2006, 1,400 people were killed in accidents where the airbags didn’t deploy. "In an effort to be as conservative as possible, the newspaper’s analysis focused on head-on crashes into the front ends of other vehicles and objects such as trees and embankments." Somehow I’m guessing that a very high percentage of those people would have been killed even if their airbags went off. If you hit a tree at a high rate of speed you’re probably going to die. If you wreck a tin can you’re probably going to die. And it seems that at least some of the people in the "newspaper’s analysis" weren’t even wearing seat belts. So is there really a story here? Autoblog seems to think so. I agree that faulty airbag systems should be recalled and dealt with as quickly as possible. But can you really expect airbags to deploy perfectly in every accident?