edit: I'm an idiot. See @eric3579's comment.

How so? First up, a passenger car wouldn't be travelling nearly as fast (or at least, you'd hope not).

Second, many modern passenger cars have side impact beams and curtain airbags.

You'd probably get injured, but I think you'd have to be pretty unlucky to be "maimed or killed".

And that guardrail is functioning exactly as designed. The connections to the ground are designed to break, but the rail itself acts like a giant rubber band. *engineering

To keep the sharks safe. Like airbags.

They have to use it more than once, so that it will pay off I'd say.

But if they wanted to make a suspenseful movie about a Great Wall, they should have made it about the Great Wall utility trucks they sell in Australia without airbags. You never know when someone might die in that Great Wall

Check out the Jalopnik article I linked above - http://jalopnik.com/the-complete-story-of-takata-airbags-and-the-biggest-re-1780143347 - and then you can call for their heads. The story quotes ex Takata engineer Mark Lillie as saying

“At the meeting, I literally said that if we go forward with this, somebody will be killed,”

As much as I'd love to pile more hate on some faceless / heartless corporate entity that doesn't care about anything other than profits, I find it somewhat unreasonable to be TOO hard on Takata here.

Just by sheer Philosophy 101 arithmetic of lives saved vs lives taken, airbags in general are massively beneficial. Take a worst case hypothetical scenario -- I know that my car has Takata airbags, AND I live in a very humid environment, AND my car is pretty old, AND the waiting list on the recall means that I can't replace the airbags for another 2+ years. Even in that scenario, I think I'd *still* opt to keep the thing in and active until it could be replaced. It would be nice to have further information on the 10 fatalities (roughly where, make/model, age) and corresponding information from other recent crashes under similar circumstances where the airbags *did* work properly, but I'd wager that even in that kind of worst-case scenario the good outcomes still handily outweigh the bad outcomes.

It is hard to foresee everything that can go wrong years and years into the future. We put lots of hardware through robotics that open doors / actuate things / etc. every few seconds continuously for months in an effort to predict how they will stand up to normal wear and tear for years, but that's harder to emulate with chemical processes.

So, until/unless there is evidence that they used the Ammonium Nitrate while knowingly and intentionally ignoring the potential long-term risks as the stuff ages in some environmental situations, I would be very hesitant to call for their heads over this. I guess that is the purpose of a "criminal investigation", but I really hope that isn't code for "witch hunt".

Nope, I've seen Toyota recalls in Europe, explicitely for faulty Takata airbags.

That said, I find the idea of a baby-claymore in your dashboard rather charming. Gives you an incentive not to crash. Can we get a study on this? Has this threat saved people from being mowed down by distracted drivers? Probably not, because people seem to lose interest after 30 seconds, but still...

More claymores, I say.

TBH, neither of my cars have airbags, they are from the 70's, and I feel like they are both more safe in an accident than newer cars because they are made of metal. ;-)

Take the risk you wish, or that you are forced to take. I was just pointing out that having your airbag replaced doesn't mean it's fixed.

Your video, Apparently The Greatest Airbag Crisis In History Is Upon Us, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

TBH the risk isn't that great. In Texas in 2015, a state with a large number of faulty airbags and roughly the same population as Australia, there were 246,335 people injured in motor vehicle crashes but only one Takata airbag death.

You better be sure about that. Because they make most airbags, and have a limited production capability, they've been allowing them to install new, but still "bad" airbags in new cars under the theory that they won't go bad for about 6 years, and they hope they can recall them again before that 6 years is up. Chances are they're doing the same with the replacements if there's not a legal reason that they aren't allowed to.
Insane, but that's the report I read last week....unfortunately I don't remember where.

My car was affected, but has already been fixed.

Jalopnik had an article about this a few days ago - http://jalopnik.com/the-complete-story-of-takata-airbags-and-the-biggest-re-1780143347

Takata used to use a safer but more expensive propellant (car to guess why they changed?), and have now changed the formula to include a drying agent to help prevent the problem in new airbags. Their issues were also exacerbated by problems they had moving their production facility to Mexico on the cheap.

There seems to be a clear trend there: cost savings trump product safety.

The A pillar looks like it is made of drink straws.

Its an interesting ethical quandary. If they were to incorporate all the safety options the western world requires by law then that could price people out of owning a car. One might also argue that those same western countries "tolerated" unsafe cars for years and years before airbags and seat-belts were even invented, never mind the standard.

*dead -- "'ULTIMATE airbag explosion! ...' This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Lukas Jonaitis..."

I like this one. Convertible. Can't stand all the plastic and airbags and catalytic converters and the other useless shit on new ones.

Damn that's morbid and creepy and intense.

It's good seeing things like this to remind yourself how royally destroyed you can really get in a car accident despite all your fancy airbags and hwat-not.