Motor Authority reports that the Dutch Cycling Federation (their equivalent of AAA) is calling on the Dutch government and the auto industry to make externally-inflating airbags standard issue on all cars. The external airbags would inflate upon impact with a cyclist or pedestrian, absorbing the impact and potentially saving lives. Swedish supplier Autoliv has developed such an airbag already, and Jaguar and Nissan have tested pop-up hoods which deflect pedestrian impacts in a similar manner. Of course, these technologies are too expensive to be included as an available feature on any vehicle, but that isn't stopping the Dutch Cyclists Federation. The spandex crowd claims that by making these technologies standard issue, some 60 lives could be saved each year and some 1,500 injuries prevented in Holland alone. If required by law, the expense would also probably cause most automakers to exit the Dutch market (score one for the cyclists) but at least it might make for some cool "Jackass" stunts. Critics say that cyclists are responsible for their own safety, and that several companies are currently developing an airbag-equipped vest for cyclists. Not that making people pay for their own safety makes any sense…
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I’d LOVE to see all the automakers depart the Dutch vehicle market if this goes through. And of course, the relatively large employer Mitsubishi, manufacturing Colt and Outlander vehicles in Holland for the entire EC, would be exporting 100% of the production… unless they demanded air bags on the trains and trucks exporting the cars, then Mitsubishi could move it’s production base to Poland, or somewhere with a) common sense and b) lower costs!
Oh yeah, don’t bother sending any spare parts into Holland, either.
The reason I’d love to see the automakers pull out of Holland if this gets rammed through, would be to send a little signal to these moronic people worldwide who think that “someone else’s money” should fix every little problem.
The place would start looking like Cuba (pertaining to cars) within a few years.
Idiots.
Maybe I’m so cranky because I’m also surrounded with a different kind of stupidity. Like, we Americans just lost our 4th Amendment to the Constitution at US borders.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/border-agents-c.html
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
“Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.” -Benjamin Franklin.
I’ll propose a safer and more economically viable alternative:
Have cyclists wear bubble-boy suits so the drivers can knock em around polo-style.
Here we go again.
Next thing you know, skydivers will require farmers to put giant airbags in the field, just in case the parachute fails. Hey, that’s 35 lives saved each year.
Every person is responsible for their own safety, whether it’s properly packing a parachute, looking left and right before crossing the road, or keeping a safe distance.
I’m kind of digging the pop-up hood idea…pedestrian gets hit by car and hood ejects them to god knows where.
Oh my. I understand the attitude behind all this — “stupid politicians are killing our driving pleasure” — but the actual situation is a bit more complicated.
Not wanting to start a flame war but Menno, surely you know that the Netherlands has a better record of protecting privacy rights than the U.S. does? No widespread wiretapping, habeas corpus is still in operation, etc etc.
I know, I’m boring and repetitive, but TTAC has published an editorial about pedestrian protection. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-truth-about-europes-pedestrian-safety-legislation/
Personally, I think there is merit in constructing cars so that they do not slaughter people upon impact. Look at Holland — it’s a densely-populated country where literally everybody rides a bike. As much as I try, I can see no insanity in this. By the way, the pop-up hoods work just fine on the Jag XK and on the Citroen C6, and they hardly increase the price to owners.
Martin, I don’t know whether you live in Holland or not, but if you do, fascism is only 70 miles away. And it has a nasty habit of spreading.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/22/middlesbrough-cops-g.html
But, it’s “OKAY” for the British government to videotape virtually every square inch of their cities, motorways and roadways. “That’s different.”
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the whole friggin’ world seems to be losing its marbles?
By the way, I’ve lived in the UK. Twice. Nine years total. So I’m pretty familiar with it.
I’m not very technical minded but, if the airbags deploy on impact, hasn’t the damage already been done? Aren’t you just making it worse by then sending the impactee off in the opposite direction? I mean, the airbags inside my car don’t deploy after I’ve already hit the steering wheel. At least I hope not.
Gekke fietsers.
Hoofdpijn is right.
If the airbags deploy just as the impact is occurring, it seems that the critical ‘bumper against femur’ impact has already occurred, and blasting off a hot and rapidly expanding airbag against the cyclist’s already-shattered long bones won’t really help matters.
And it the airbag is to deploy right *before* impact, how on earth does the car know that it’s *about* to crash? Radar? Sonar? Or a glovebox incubator full of teeming Midiclorian microbes, channeling The Force and warning of imminent collisions?
I like the idea of a personal airbag suit (preferably fireproof, bouyant and bulletproof also) that turns the endangered cyclist or pedestrian into a bouncing, rolling Mars Rover re-entry vehicle. Kind of dangerous for the guy riding next to him, though.
Spy photos of protective bicycle clothing right here with this link!
Notice the test subject feels so secure in his riding safety that he can spark up a smoke and ride with no hands or feet on the pedals.
This seems like one of those cases of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Saving 60 lives a year would be great, but leaders should bear some responsibility beyond feel-good-ism. If Dutch politicians want to ban cars outright or severely restrict their specs (ala Japanese Kei cars) they should just do it. This proposal would limit vehicle choice in a much less practical way and all in the name of “60 fewer deaths each year, if our stats are right.”
I’m all for fewer bicycle deaths… my bike is my main form of transportation. But even if cars had magic airbags that saved lives, they would still be no substitute for defensive riding. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be cycling into an Escalade to test their capabilities either. A personal airbag does sound fun though…
I think Edward nailed it here. Good intentions, but putting it in effect may not work. I remember than automakers were working on pop-up hoods to limit the impact of pedestrians/cyclists when they hit the hood, and generally start suffering internal bleeding.
This said, I strongly object to the usage of the term “soviet” holland. Social democrat, yes, but Soviet, no. No more than the U.S. is a repressive, fascist regime.
I read a statistic (Dutch Bicycling Council, 2006; Netherlands Ministry of Transport, 2006) stating that the use of helmets by adult bicyclists in Holland was less that 1% and that most Dutch cycling experts opposed the mandatory use of helmets, citing that the lack of convenience and decreased stylishness of riding with one would decrease bicycle use overall. I don’t know how many lives would be saved every year if all cyclists wore helmets but I can’t help but think it would be somewhere north of 60.
Of course, that would put the responsibility on the cyclist instead of the car manufacturer and I guess that’s pretty unreasonable.
Oh, and “soviet” does seem a little over the top.
As an avid cyclist (I have crossed the US by bicycle) I second what hoofdpijn says directly above about helmets. My brains, if not my life, were saved on Sept 6, 1991, when I hit a very large bump in the road that I didn’t see, and my head hit the pavement. And my old optometrist had to give up her practice after her naked head hit the bicycle path when she was barely moving. The statistics on the value of bicycle helmets are quite clear, and anyone who goes without them is being stupid, unless they are extremely tight for money. I also always wear a bright lime green vest on my bicycle to make myself more visible to motorists.
I have trouble seeing the point of legislating external airbags on cars if only one percent of dutch cyclists are wearing helmets. The cost of helmets for every dutch cyclist would be far less than the cost of external airbags for all the cars.
On top of everything else, I have no idea whether this external airbag on cars would actually reduce maimings or deaths. Have they looked into that?
The penultimate sentence probably explains everything.
“Injury accents bike-car tensions” By Aaron Beck and Tim Doulin in The Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday, April 23, 2008:
David Krohn was stopped on his bicycle in traffic on N. High Street in the Ohio State University campus area Friday night when a car behind him started honking. He pulled over to let the metallic-blue convertible pass. As it did, the four college-age men inside hurled obscenities at Krohn. Then he did something that apparently infuriated the men: He touched the car to steady himself on his bike. One of the men bounced a plastic bottle off Krohn’s chest and, now on foot, chased him as he pedaled down an alley off Frambes Avenue.
“The next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance,” said the 64-year-old Krohn, who had suffered a broken jaw and gash on his head. The attack is an extreme example of the tension that exists between cyclists and motorists, and confrontations could escalate as the weather warms.
* * *
Krohn was attacked as he was on his way home after performing with Columbus Dance Theatre at its Downtown location. … [which] has started a fundraiser to help Krohn pay his medical bills.
“We’re getting responses from all over the country because people hear the story and go, ‘Oh my God!’ ” Artistic Director Tim Veach said. “It’s ridiculous. Who would beat up a 64-year-old mime? That’s about as low as you can get.”
A friend of mine would have loved one of these on his car when he hit a child who ran out into the road.
He braked; he hit the child; he knew it wasn’t his fault… he still feels terrible about it.
I think most of us would.
People who walk are poor. Poor people are a burden to society and therefore to deserve to get hit and run over and mangled. It makes perfect logical sense, really.
I’m not sure why people here are so violently against this (provided the technology isn’t stupidly expensive and actually works). I guess you folks are against requiring seat belts as well.
The “Soviet Holland” thing is just a Yakov Smirnoff reference… “soviet” is probably one of the last words I’d use to seriously describe the dutch government.
A couple of observations:
1. Bicycle helmets can save the lives of individual cyclists who fall and hit their head. However, mandating bicycle helmets has not shown to save lives. Possible reasons are that (a) motorists drive closer to cyclists with helmets, and (b) mandating helmets reduces overall bicycle use, reducing the benefit of biking in numbers. (The latter partly explains why Holland has among the lowest bicycle injury rates in the world despite its low helmet use).
2. It is ridiculous to demand that pedestrians and cyclists “protect themselves” rather than asking automotive designers to make cars less deadly for them. It is a lot easier to add some accident mitigating equipment to a car than it is for a pedestrian or cyclist to carry such equipment. Having seen a pedestrian being killed by a car, I strongly support any research and design compromises that would have made it possible for this person to survive.
Bollocks. 100% pure weapons-grade ocean-going bollocks.
1. When I ride a bike, I wear a helmet. The road is HARD and my skull and brain are FRAGILE. It’s common sense, and no amount of vague hand waving about motorists possibly ‘driving closer to cyclists wearing helmets’ changes that.
2. What exactly is ‘ridiculous’ about pedestrians and cyclists ‘protecting themselves’? When I am on the road either as a motorist, cyclist or pedestrian, I have final responsibility for my own safety. I don’t cross the road at a place where I can’t see approaching vehicles. At junctions, I don’t cycle up the inside of large trucks which may be about to make a turn.
Maybe we should just cover the entire world with bouncy padding, so that the carefree Eloi can blunder about totally absorbed in their i-gadgets without any risk of ever hurting themselves – and they won’t even need to wear uncool looking helmets!
This idea has great possibilities.
If I could run that front airbag into the jackass in front of me who has decided that EVERYONE should drive his/her speed it would make my day.
Just the thought of ramming an absent minded driver, exploding a giant airbag and putting him into a sideways skid at 50mph puts a smile on my face.
I want my front airbag to retract and recharge in case I need to educate the same driver twice.
Do you wanna pay for a hood airbag on your car?
I don’t.
Maybe we should set the max speed limit to 15mph on all roads. This would probably save thousands of lives a year. Far more lives saved than hood airbags….
Edward: thanks for explaining the Soviet Holland expression; I honestly didn’t know the reference and was irritated by what I perceived to be a Rushism. So, I should apologize for my annoyed tone.
hoofdpijn, cjdumm: a car’s hood can be constructed to be relatively energy-absorbing. The problem is the engine underneath, which is hard and therefore causes major injuries to the head. Typically, a pedestrian or bicycle collision takes place in two stages: first there is an impact at the forward edge of the hood, around the radiator grille. A few split-seconds later, the victim’s head hits the hood. The pop-up hood is released a split-second after the first impact in order to mitigate the second.
This is a tried and tested and effective technology. Laws and regulations in the EU and in Japan are speeding up its introduction, based on the realization that the technology is cost-effective.
David Holzman, hansbos: Indeed, bicycle helmets save lives in theory but do not (statistically) reduce deaths in real life. Why is this so? A British study found that car drivers tend to keep less distance from bicyclists wearing helmets, but were more careful when approaching those without helmets. This is one of the reasons why no European country has yet mandated the use of helmets for bicyclists.
The “Soviet Holland” thing is just a Yakov Smirnoff reference… “soviet” is probably one of the last words I’d use to seriously describe the dutch government.
Well, I live in the Netherlands, and it’s certainly not one of the last words I’d use to the decribe the government…
Look at these lovely progressive income taxes (schijf means something like bracket, percentage is the percentage of Income Tax you have to pay)
Schijf 1: below EUR 17.319 –> 33,65%
Schijf 2: 17.320 t/m 31.112–> 41,40%
Schijf 3: 31.113 t/m 53.064–> 42,00%
Schijf 4: beyond 53.065 –> 52,00% (yes, really)
Then, there are the benefits that you get if you make less money and you don’t get when you make a decent amount of money, like health care compensation and compensations for education for children and things like that, you know that you expect would be accounted for in the first place by the taxes…
Then you have 45,2% special tax on car sales. So when you buy a car, you pay the price the manufacturer asks + 45,2% +19%(VAT, but no VAT on the special tax). Obviously this hits people harder that buy a nice car…which again means communism.
Really, bottom line is whether on paper you make 60000 or 30000 really doesn’t matter that much down the line, which is somewhat Soviet…much like the healthcare system.
The problem of distributing wealth of course is that there is always someone on the worse end of the deal, and you transfer problems to those who deserve it the least, because in a normal situation they could buy themselves out of it (private healthcare for instance) yet now they have to share costs for others and can’t pay the high costs for themselves anymore.
Also; but if you do, fascism is only 70 miles away.
The UK, by its own choice, is anything but a good example of what things are like in the rest of Europe. The Netherlands is by no means a fascist country, the problem is there is so much freedom of speech that some nutcase in the parliament can say what ever he wants about foreign immigrants without having to account for it because one cannot be prosecuted for quotes in parliament to ensure freedom of speech, which in itself is no bad thing.
The hoodairbag is just another example in a long line of incidents that prove that those people in The Hague have never driven a car themselves, because they frown upon cars, however, they’re not going to enforce the rules without the rest of the EU, but they are going to try and convince the other countries this is a good thing. Hopefully, someone will have the sense to kill the idea quickly.
surely you know that the Netherlands has a better record of protecting privacy rights than the U.S. does?
Yes, well, our own government doesn’t tap our communication, but the US does and has done for a long time, and our government knows about that, so…
Lastly…wearing a helmet on a bike? Are you kidding, you know how stupid that would look to all my friends/colleagues/innocent bystanders. The shame would kill me.
Nobody wears cycling gear either by the way, just regular clothes.