Creators Syndicate

FIGHT BACK! BY DAVID HOROWITZ 

Air Bags and Anti-Lock Brakes 
         
        Will an air bag really save your life in an accident?  There's
a good chance of it. According to the Insurance  Institute for Highway
Safety, air bags reduce fatalities by  an average of 24 percent in
front and front-angle collisions.  True, if your face hits the air bag
before it's fully  inflated, it can cause minor cuts and abrasions. But
such  injuries are minor compared to hitting the dashboard or  steering
wheel. 
        Air bags will be required equipment on all passenger  vehicles
in the United States by the end of the decade, and  the market for them
is expected to grow by 23 percent every  year for the next seven years.
Besides bags intended for  installation in new cars, there is also a
growing demand for  replacement units. 
        70,000 air bags are deployed in accidents every year in  this
country. Those bags are not reusable. They have to be  replaced, and
that can be expensive. At the low end, a  replacement unit for a Dodge
Intrepid costs a little more  than $400. But replacing one in a Lexus
will set you back  nearly $1,200. That puts air bags right up there
with car  stereos as desirable accessories for car strippers. 
        Widespread theft of air bags began about a year ago.  Thieves
discovered that the driver's-side bag was fairly easy  to remove.
Remove one bolt, unplug a couple of wires, and  it's gone -- it's as
simple as pulling out a radio.  (Passenger-side bags are more difficult
to steal because  they're imbedded in the dash.) Now, stolen air bags
are  turning up in chop shops for backdoor sale to dealers and 
garages. 
        No one knows how many air bags are stolen every year.  It's too
new a crime for any reliable statistics. But the  number of thefts is
growing. One possible solution might be  to mark air bags with
identification numbers that can be  traced to an individual car. That
may help, but like putting  numbers on car body parts, it's not going
to solve the  problem entirely. *** 
        Probably the second most popular safety option with car  buyers
is anti-lock brake systems. ABS brakes prevent skids  and spins during
panic stops by sensing when the brakes are  about to lock -- and then
applying and releasing the brakes  several times a second to help bring
the car to a controlled  stop. 
        The question is, do they actually prevent or reduce the 
severity of accidents? The evidence is a lot less clear than  with air
bags. The Highway Loss Data Institute studied 95,000  insurance claims
involving certain models of General Motors  cars. It found there was no
significant difference in either  the incidence or severity of
accidents between cars with and  without ABS brakes. 
        There could be several reasons for that. One may be that  most
accidents are not caused by uncontrolled skids. Another  possibility is
that drivers simply don't know how to use  their brakes in a panic
stop, or they expect the ABS brakes  to stop them on a dime and don't
drive defensively enough.  Safety experts aren't sure. 
        But they do agree that ABS brakes are still a good  safety
investment. The institute study found that while anti- lock brakes
seemed to do little to prevent fatal multi-car  crashes, they did
reduce fatal collisions with pedestrians,  cyclists and animals by
between 5 percent and 15 percent. And  that alone is worth the price of
the system. COPYRIGHT 1994 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.