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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!gcc-bill!john
From: john@gcc-bill.ARPA (John Allred)
Newsgroups: net.consumers,net.auto
Subject: Re: If you could save lives, would you?
Message-ID: <305@gcc-bill.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 12:14:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: gcc-bill.305
Posted: Fri Sep  6 12:14:57 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 01:19:35 EDT
References: <2778@harpo.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@gcc-bill.UUCP (John Allred)
Organization: General Computer Company, Cambridge Ma (Home of the HyperDrive)
Lines: 32
Xref: watmath net.consumers:2922 net.auto:8079

In article <2778@harpo.UUCP> jad@harpo.UUCP (jad) writes:
>
>  If you had the power to save lives, would you do it? You and I do have that
>  power. On this day and at this moment, people are being smashed to death    
>  inside their cars when their lives could be preserved by air bags. We are
>  deprived of air bags by the opposing efforts of the powerful auto industry.
>  Safety experts claim that each year air bags would prevent thousands of     
>  deaths and prevent hundreds of thousands of serious injuries. A chorus of
>  voices raised in unison and directed at our representatives would have a
>  great impact. Please write. No endeavor is more important nor more noble
>  than to save lives.
>  

Usage of seat belts would save those very same thousands of lives, and then
some.  Air bags are, at best, marginally effective.  They offer *no* protection
against side and rear end collisions.  Also, if you have a secondary collision,
the air bag has already deflated, and your head goes *bash* against the wind-
shield.

And, the biggest problem of all:  air bags *don't* keep you in the car.  Far
and away, the quickest way to die in an auto accident is to get thrown out of
the car.

I have very little sympathy for people who don't use seatbelts who get injured
or killed in an accident.  Their own stupidity killed them, not the auto 
manufactures failure to supply air bags.

And if these same idiots fail to buckle up their kids, and the kids get killed,the parents should be prosecuted for manslaughter, or perhaps murder.
-- 
John Allred
General Computer Company 
uucp: seismo!harvard!gcc-bill!john