How Does an Airbag Work?

As I was driving through Athens this past weekend I happened upon an accident scene where a lady who looked to be in her 80's had just wrecked her car into a telephone pole. There were several people already on the scene and an ambulance from the hospital located just down the street was approaching in my rear view mirror. As I pulled over to let them by, I was able to see that she was speaking with a woman there to help, and appeared confused but unhurt. Her BMW though was quite damaged. I could not tell from the scene what had happened, but the right front of her car was totally folded under and it looked like the passenger side wheel was almost totally torn off.

What I was impressed by was that every section of the entire car had deployed an air bag. Drivers side, passenger side and both sides front and rear doors were covered by air bags. She was the only occupant, but the car had automatically attempted to protect everyone who may have been in the car. I had to imagine how badly the woman may have been hurt in the past without that type of safety equipment.

Today's post is to share some information with our customers on how the technology works. It is really quite amazing, and probably should be part of your decision making process when replacing your car. More protection is better, and the newer the car, the more likely it will have the side restraint airbags. Obviously the picture above is just an attention getter, not an aftermarket airbag...

How does an airbag work?

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Thrill and Sophistication

I wrote in a recent post about making car buying decisions based on total cost of ownership, including price and availability of auto parts. You must understand however that my rules don't always apply to my spouse (anyone else understand this?). She has been leaning on me lately to get some sort of BMW. Not a new one obviously (those who know me will snicker here) but some form of BMW that will give the aura of sophistication while also providing the thrill of a true sports car. I mentioned that she could get most of that from the ex-police interceptor I bought recently (there is that snicker again). She said I don't think so...

So I came across this today and I need your help; Which one of these two cars do you think I should get her? (Feel free to do the entire ROFL now)



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P.S. What's with the headlights on the second one. I know in the old days the cartoonist would use that to signify someone was drunk. It seems a little strange to me.

63 MPG BMW Convertible

It may seem counter-intuitive to cross promote another blog site from this one, but I continue to find Jalopnik a great source for many of my posts. I will try to not get sidetracked with political diatribe here, but we Americans truly get what we deserve. Our likes, fears and actions are watched closely and there are many who will supply our deceived wants, even though we really need something else. I would love to see a company with the steely resolve to change our wants to more closely resemble our actual needs. This story about a remade BMW convertible roadster with a 63 MPG clean diesel engine is a case in point. Who doesn't love a BMW convertible? Who wouldn't prefer to get much better gas mileage? Yet we continue to lean towards the arrogance of huge engines (whose real power we honestly only use about 2% of the time). Someone please give us another chance and build something like this! I think the new powerful 6 cylinders from Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro are a good step. Now let's get a mid size truck that makes 40 MPG?

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