A neighbor stopped by the other day since he saw my brother and I tugging the lawn mower out of the mud. I hadn’t seen this neighbor in quite a few years. When you live rural a neighbor is miles away.
During our conversation he related the story about an accident he was in recently. He kept an old white 2 wheel drive pickup truck around for running errands and driving between farms. He was on his way back home one day in no particular hurry when two girls pulled up to a stop sign at an intersection he was approaching. They sat there a bit and just as he got to the intersection they pulled out, causing him to strike them in the front post of the driver’s side.
It matters not why the girls pulled out. Perhaps the stop sign blocked their view? Perhaps they had been talking and didn’t take a fresh look. The bottom line is it was a bad wreck with significant injuries but no fatalities.
Most of his injuries were caused by impacting the steering wheel. You see, the airbag did not deploy.
I know, my and most other people’s first thought would be his truck had a Takata airbag. It turns out the brand wouldn’t matter in this situation. The truck he was driving was more than 10 years old.
Took a while for me to wrap my head around that one as well.
Once he got out of the hospital some weeks later he talked to a lawyer about the airbag not deploying. I do not know if it was a lawyer for his insurance company or just one he found. I do know we were both shocked at what the lawyer told him. According to some law or regulation, airbag liability only lasts for 10 years. I do not know if this time limit is set state by state or if there is a Federal standard. I do believe there are very few things injury lawyers won’t pursue given all of the late night television commercials, so…
When you consider that, according to this 2015 USA Today article, the average age of a vehicle on our roads is 11.5 years. Think about that. The product reliability/safety rules do not extend to cover the actual service life of vehicles. It’s even more shocking to think that for every brand new vehicle rolling off a dealer showroom there has to be another 23 year old vehicle commuting the highways and byways of this great nation. This means more than half of the vehicles on the road have airbags which may no longer deploy.
I do not know of any test or meter one can use to ensure your airbag would deploy in an accident. You can use a gauge to check your tire pressure. Pull a dipstick to check engine oil or transmission fluid, but nothing you can do to verify your airbag will actually deploy short of getting into an accident and then it is a bit late.
This information was a quite shocking to me since all of my vehicles are outside of that 10 year liability window. I have no plans to get rid of them. I plan to actually get the full 300,000 mile lifespan out of them. Seeing as they are just past or approaching the half way mark, I have quite a few years to go.
I’m not the only one asking about such things. Both autoblog and the Wall Street Journal have ran articles on it over the years. In the early 1980s when most vehicles sold in America were rust buckets in waiting which could barely make it to 100,000 miles there wasn’t much of an issue. Now we have many models put out by different manufacturers widely known to have 300,000 mile drive trains, this is a serious issue.
This chart shows the average miles per driver by age group according to the Federal Highway Administration. I can remember when dealerships only allowed about 6,000 miles per year for a trade in. If it had more than that it was considered “high miles” and thus worth less. If that number were a reality today it would take you 50 years to hit 300,000 miles. If it could last that long you would own one car your entire life.
Current suggestions I see posted on-line say the number is now up to 12,000 miles per year which means your car has to last 25 years to hit 300,000. For more than a few of today’s cars, 25 years is a reality, provided you keep it clean (especially in winter), perform all routine maintenance (oil changes, brakes, belts, hoses, etc.) and most importantly, part it inside. Sun and weather related damage can age a vehicle’s body really fast.
We are quickly approaching at time where Federal regulations will need to be put in place defining “life of a vehicle” and airbag life in terms easily understandable by all citizens and more importantly located in an easily accessible place. I did all kinds of Web searches looking for the liability limit of an airbag. I found lots of articles stating newer airbags should last “the life of the vehicle” but I didn’t find any which spelled out at what point the manufacturer was able to wash their hands of all liability. If the lawyer knew it then it has to be somewhere, it just wasn’t somewhere I found.
Yes, I and many others grew up driving vehicles without airbags. When I was a kid few people had or wore seat belts. The difference now is the safety designed into vehicles is designed assuming the airbag will actually do its job.
