Another big recall 44

[enginesrus]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/business/air-bag-recall/index.html

Will they ever learn a tin can with no pressure relief system, is just not the proper pressure vessel.

 

[SWComposites]

The data, if there is any, is proprietary, so you won’t see it.
Tossed under the rug? Maybe you should call up the NHTSA and ask them.
No engineering? I doubt that. Where is proof of your claim?
Legal? Well, air bags are what the safety advocates wanted long ago. And they probably have saved way more lives than the number of people injured by airbags. And airbags are mandated by law and regulation.

 

[dik]

You don't have to always have a solution to a problem. By posting it, you are making others aware of the problem that they might have a solution.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

You want to create a perceived harm by highlighting outlier cases so airbags get removed from cars?

 

[FacEngrPE]

Has anyone seen a comparison of the in service experiences of airbag failure vs IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 Safety Integrity Level Analysis?
Are the PFD (probability of dangerous failure on demand) and RRF (risk reduction factor) of low demand operation for different SILs as defined in IEC EN 61508 a reasonable pass / fail criteria for airbags?
What criteria apply?

===========
Anyone want to add their 2 cents to this discussion?
===========
NHTSA will hold a public meeting regarding its initial decision that certain frontal driver and passenger air bag inflators manufactured by ARC and Delphi through January 2018 contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety and should be recalled.

The public meeting will be held at USDOT headquarters in Washington, DC, beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET on October 5, 2023.

Registration for in-person attendance closed on September 22. Those wishing to watch the public meeting virtually via livestream can still register via Zoom.

 

[dik]

I think SWC summed it up quite well...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[enginesrus]

I also find it strange that there has been zero action on the other airbag inflators in vehicles that took part in the big Takata recalls years ago. I'm talking about the 2007 and up years of some vehicles with seat airbags, side airbags and seat belt tensioners. I'm sure they are primed with the same dangerous propellant that the frontal airbags have.

I do not want to see airbags removed from anything. I just want them to be safe. They need engineering time equivalent to what an F1 engine has, because peoples lives are more important than winning a race.

How come it seems like I'm the only one here that doesn't want my friends and relatives to lose their face or lives over these dangerous inflator designs?
Airbags are a great idea, and a fabulous invention. Its the dangerous inflation system that is the issue.

 

[IRstuff]

I just want them to be safe.

No, you want then 100% safe; which is not financially practical.

How come it seems like I'm the only one here that doesn't want my friends and relatives to lose their face or lives over these dangerous inflator designs?

Why would you let them drive in something that causes 46,000 deaths a year; that's 2000 times the number of people that died from Takata airbags.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Pud]

"Airbags are a great idea, and a fabulous invention. Its the dangerous inflation system that is the issue"

Who says dangerous? You? World?

It's a case of probabilities. Airbags have proven to be lifesavers on average. A bit like seatbelts/side impact protection/crumple zones etc.

If you don't want your relatives to get killed/injured by airbags then take their cars off them!
Then of course their risk of death/serious injury will increase when they cycle or walk.

Btw: I've noticed that you haven't responded to questions re your qualifications to be on this site (refer to Littleinch above, which could be applied to most of your posts btw)



Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.

 

[enginesrus]

So the last 2 posts, are those the ideas of how to fix this reoccurring problem with faulty air bag inflators?
Its an engineering forum lets attack the problem with the device not the messenger.

 

[thebard3]

Let's look at it this way-
Race cars do not use air bags. The drivers are tightly bound into their seats and surrounded by more tight-fitting appliances to keep the body stationary. We could do that in passenger cars, but that's really going to limit your ability to drink a morning coffee and put on makeup. Also, race cars require crew members to help strap in the occupants. Probably not an ideal situation for most motorists taking their family to the beach.
So- Decades of trial and error have led to the 'best-available-technology' of using an inflating airbag to keep the projectile (AKA body parts) from contacting parts of the vehicle while travelling at speed. The airbag is required to initiate and complete in a very short period of time. So we use a bomb, pointed at the projectile, to limit it's movement. This bomb has to function perfectly over a wide variety of environmental conditions and remain stable for as long as the vehicle is in service.
Nothing is 100% reliable. I'm willing to accept that driving my vehicle includes inherent risks. The slight risk of being injured by an airbag is much, much less than the likelihood that it will save my life instead.

As an aside, in my state, motorcyclists are not required to wear a helmet, but I can be issued a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, even if I'm not in my convertible.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

 

[JAE]

So the last 2 posts, are those the ideas of how to fix this reoccurring problem with faulty air bag inflators?
Its an engineering forum lets attack the problem with the device not the messenger.

Statistics and probabilities ARE engineering practices and measures that allow us to know when a solution is feasible, appropriate, and economical.

No one has attacked you - these are just rational, engineering-based responses to your statements.

You don't seem willing to respond to the counter positions presented to you...such as "why would you let them drive in something that causes 46,000 deaths a year; that's 2000 times the number of people that died from Takata airbags."

 

[IRstuff]

We have a similar problem with aerospace electronics; a failure can cause a plane to crash or a billion dollar satellite to fail. So, the obvious solution is to add fault detection; but, as it turns out, the tiny bit of fault detection we put in is as much as the customers want to risk. In order to fully test out a circuit, the fault detection would be nearly as big and complex as the circuitry it's trying to test, AND failures on the fault detection itself potentially become a problem. So, we live with a non-100% solution, because there really isn't one.

We can harken back to the days of Mythbusters to see a non-explosive means of projectile launching, which is to use a LARGE bore gas reservoir, backed up by a pump or smaller bore gas reservoir, and using a membrane seal that bursts at a mechanically designed pressure threshold. We can use that concept to inflate our airbags, and just have to carry around a gas reservoir and pump, AND live with the mechanical variations of the threshold setting, because building hundreds of millions of burst seals is not the same as building a few thousand. And we'll ignore the possibility of death or injury because the seals burst too early or too late. Or the gas reservoir burst, spewing shrapnel all over the car; so we beef up everything and now the car weighs 500 pounds more. And we use precision machining to ensure the seals burst within ±0.1 psi of the setpoint, but it costs $5000 for each seal.

And shouldn't we have run-flat tires? There was an innocent driver who died when the lost wheel of a semi in the opposite direction flew across the median into his windshield, killing him instantly; seems like we should have fully impact proof glass all around the passenger compartment to protect our friends and family. Oh, and shouldn't we make it impossible to get injured or killed by some rando T-boning one's car? So what if it doubles the price of the car, adds 2500 pounds to the curb weight and drops the mileage to 15 mpg; isn't safety worth it?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[SwinnyGG]

How come it seems like I'm the only one here that doesn't want my friends and relatives to lose their face or lives over these dangerous inflator designs?

You aren't. The reason no one agrees with you is that as engineers, we respond to data. As I've stated in your threads many, many times before. The data in this case indicates that the true probability of any of us, or any of our relatives, or any people we personally know being injured or killed by the described airbag failure is microscopically small.

The probability of the event itself is not only extremely small - it's dwarfed by a bunch of other much more likely probabilities which you aren't up in arms about as far as we can tell. If your goal is protecting your family from danger, you need to be much more worried about these things:

-Standard issue car accidents: almost 43,000 deaths last year alone
-House fires: 450 deaths per year
-Lightning: 28 deaths per year
-Open windows: 12 child deaths per year, more than 4,000 injuries
-Bicycles: 1200 deaths per year
-Venomous animals: 75 deaths per year
-Sharks: 5.5 deaths per year
-Dogs: more than 4 million injuries per year, and 16 deaths
-Food: more than 48 million cases of food poisoning per year, 130,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths

than you do about this airbag issue, which seems to cause about 2 deaths per year.

But in order to understand that, you'd have to have at least some miniscule interest in understanding the laws of probability that govern a lot of engineering decisions. You've demonstrated many, many times that you have no such interest.

If you really cared about the danger, you'd be screaming at your kids or grandkids or whomever that they should never ride a bike, never swim in the ocean or any other natural body of water, never walk around in the woods, never own or even go anywhere near a dog, never drive a car, never eat anything other than vitamin supplements, their house should be made from poured concrete with no flammables and no electricity, and that once that house was built they should never go outside. But you don't, because what you really want is to rant incorrectly about a perceived lack of engineering in the automotive world. You're just not correct. That's all there is to it, and that's why no one who is knowledgeable about engineering agrees with the things you post.

 

[cranky108]

Because you used sharks in your example, you need to know that vending machines kill more people than sharks.
Just a one more thing.

 

[thebard3]

This thread has become something like trying to explain things to a hammer.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

 

[dik]

So, airbags are less dangerous than vending machines... that's comfort.


...a very dull hammer.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[EdStainless]

Most people don't realize that the airbag is the pressure relief device.
The size, venting, and blowout panels in them are carefully designed to provide inflations at the right speed and force.
The issues that I have seen involve inflators that fragment and then either the fragments cause injury or cause inflation failure.
If you think that these issues are serious, try to imagine what would happen if 'failure to inflate' was a common failure.
I have only been hit by an airbag once than was intentional.
Even when you know it is coming it is over before you know that it happened.
I haven't done the math but would not be surprised if airbags prevent >10e5 more deaths than they cause.
That sounds like success to me.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[SwinnyGG]

Because you used sharks in your example, you need to know that vending machines kill more people than sharks.

Our friends over at Slate seem to indicate that this was once true, but may or may not be true any longer, depending on the reporting rate of vending machine deaths.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/sharks-vending-machines-death.html

But who knows, maybe the author has an annual vacation funded by Big Vending Machine and his purpose is not mere evaluation of data.

Either way I'm glad this thread is delving into the threats to human safety that really matter most.

This thread has become something like trying to explain things to a hammer.

How these threads always go:

1 - enginesrus posts some wild claim that isn't true, is based on pseudoscience, or lacks significant context
2 - contrary claims are made, evidence for those contrary is sometimes provided by those without a will permanently calloused by enginesrus's historical behavior. Claims typically include either reasonable explanations of history or, often, explanations as to why enginesrus's perceived emergency is in fact not really a major problem, or in some cases even a problem at all
3 - enginesrus becomes incredulous that he isn't being showered with gratitude for pointing out whatever 'problem' the thread discusses
4 - Calloused wills like myself attempt to explain for the thousandth time why said gratitude is not being showered upon enginesrus
5 - enginesrus disappears from the thread completely, and his few week to few month eng-tips hibernation cycle begins
6 - enginesrus re-appears and posts a thread, sending us back to 1

 

[SwinnyGG]

I haven't done the math but would not be surprised if airbags prevent >10e5 more deaths than they cause

It's fun when we have actual data.

IIHS estimates are updated every year, but the average is between 3,000 and 4,000 'estimated lives saved' per year. So it's only 1500-2000 times more lives saved than deaths caused.

Not 10e5, but still success in my estimation.

 

[IRstuff]

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/#:~:text=Since%201923%2C%20the%20mileage%20death,rate%20increased%2011%25%20from%202020.[/URL]]The population motor-vehicle death rate reached its peak in 1937 with 30.8 deaths per 100,000 population. The current rate is 14.3 per 100,000, representing a 54% improvement.

Seat belts, crumple zones, and airbags.

Note that the overall death rate from all causes is

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm[/URL]]Death rate: 1,043.8 deaths per 100,000 population

Takata death rate 27/67000000 = 0.0403 per 100,000 airbags

Oh, I think the OP ignores everything we say is because we all look like nails to them.



TTFN (ta ta for now)
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