...And that is a big part of why I'd never want to drive a motorcycle. Do everything right, get plowed into by some retard. At least when that happens in a car, I've got a seatbelt, airbags, and metal cage around me to mitigate the damage.

Technically "five person" airbag as the original video title states.

The van can hold 15 people, but only the first person on each of the five rows gets the benefit. The other 10 people squash into those first five people.

Is bikers just like, falling over a big problem or something? What problem is this invention solving exactly? I mean, I guess if it has airbags and a seat belt then it might protect you from moderate collisions and fender benders.

So yah. It doesn't look as nippy as a proper bike, it restricts the bikers vision and it makes you look like a dork. I also couldn't help but notice that they don't show it going around a corner. Or turning at all actually.

Maybe they should just do away with the gyro, add a third wheel an....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
Oh, nvm then.

I have to agree with other by saying this video has an incorrect title. it should read "Really cool old and not idiot proofed elevator".

There is nothing essentially dangerous about this elevator. It just does not have airbags, voice instructions, seat belts, padded walls, signs in 12 languages, or free helmets. I would love to have something like this in a building I work/live in.

Actually, this is true, but it's also only one of the recall items that GM has issued Recalls for this year.

"It recalled 8,208 of its 2014 cars on May 7, for example, because they might have rear brakes on the front wheels."

"GM says it has informed regulators about two more recalls imminent but not yet announced. The latest batch includes safety belt, air bag, transmission and electrical issues in a range of midsize sedans, full-size crossovers and SUVs, and pickups."


GM's U.S. recalls this year

Below are General Motors' recall of vehicles in the U.S. since Jan. 1

Date, no. of U.S. vehicles, models affected, recall defect

- Jan. 13: 324,970 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and 2014 GMC Sierra for overheated exhaust parts

- Feb. 7 and 25: 1,367,146 of the 2005-07 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2006-07 Chevrolet HHR, 2005-07 Pontiac G5, 2006-07 Pontiac Solstice, 2003-07 Saturn ION, 2007 Saturn Sky, 2007 Opel GT, 2007 Daewoo G2X for ignition switch

- Feb 20: 355 of the 2014 Buick Enclave, LaCrosse, Regal and Verano; 2014 Chevrolet Cruze, Impala, Malibu and Travers; 2014 GMC Acadia for transmission shift cable adjuster

- March 17: 63,903 of the 2013-14 Cadillac XTS for brake vacuum booster

- March 17: 303,013 of the 2009 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana for airbag

- March 17: 1,178,407 of the 2008-13 Buick Enclave, 2008-13 Chevrolet Traverse, 2008-13 GMC Acadia, 2008-10 Saturn Outlook for airbag

- March 17: 656 of the Cadillac ELR for electronic brake control

- March 28: 823,788 of the 2008-11 Chevrolet HHR, 2008-10 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2008-10 Pontiac G5, 2008-10 Pontiac Solstice, 2008-10 Saturn Sky, 2008-10 Opel GT, 2008-09 Daewoo G2X for ignition switch

- March 28: 174,046 of the 2013-14 Chevrolet Cruze for front axle shaft

- March 28: 489, 936 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado, 2014 GMC Sierra, 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, 2014 GMC Yukon and Yukon XL for oil cooler fitting.

- March 31: 1,340,447 of the 2004-06 Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx, 2004-06 Pontiac G6, 2004-07 Saturn Ion, 2008-09 Chevrolet Malibu, 2008-09 Pontiac G6, 2008-09 Saturn Aura, 2010 Cobalt, 2009-10 Chevrolet HHR for electric power steering

- April 9: 2,191,014 of the 2005-10 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2006-11 Chevrolet HHR, 2007-10 Pontiac G5, 2006-10 Pontiac Solstice, 2003-07 Saturn ION, 2007-10 Saturn Sky for ignition key cylinder

- April 24: 50,571 of the 2013 Cadillac SRX for acceleration lag

- April 19: 23,249 of the 2009-10 Pontiac Vibe (built by Toyota) for air bags

- April 24: 51 of the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado HD and 2014 GMC Sierra HD for diesel transfer pump

- April 29: 51,640 of the 2014 Chevrolet Traverse, 2014 GMC Acadia and 2014 Buick Enclave for inaccurate fuel gauge

- April 29: 56,214 of the 2007-08 Saturn Aura for shift cable

- May 7: 8,208 of the 2014 Chevrolet Malibu and 2104 Buick Lacrosse for brake rotors

- May 14: 111,889 of the 2005-07 Corvette for headlight low beams

- May 14: 19,225 of the 2014 Cadillac CTS for windshield wipers

- May 14: 140,067 of the 2014 Malibu for brake boost

- May 14: 2,440,524 of the 2004-12 Chevrolet Malibu, 2004-07 Malibu Maxx, 2005-10 Pontiac G6 and 2007-10 Saturn Aura for brake lamps

- May 14: 477 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe for steering tie-rod

- May 16: 1,402 of the 2015 Cadillac Escalade for passenger air bag

- May 19: 1,339,355 of the 2009-10 Saturn Outlook, 2009-14 Chevrolet Traverse, 2009-14 GMC Acadia and 2009-14 Buick Enclave for front seat belts

- May 19: 58 of the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado HD and 2015 GMC Sierra HD for loose fuse block

- May 19: 1,075,102 of the 2004-08 Chevrolet Malibu and 2005-08 Pontiac G6 for shift cable (expands April 29 Saturn Aura recall)

Total 18,666,842
( http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/05/20/gm-recalls-fine-goverment/9329481/ )

For anyone that hasn't followed what this is about...

For the problems itemized in this video.
Loss of :
- power brake assist
- airbags
- power steering.

This affair was actually about 1 specific issue :
The detent in the key socket rotator was not as strong as it should have been.

What that specifically meant was that :
IF you had a large heavy keychain on your key, and you jerked it, or knocked it such that it swings hard, the keychain could pull on the key hard enough to turn the key to the OFF position.

So when the car would turn off, you'd lose the power brakes, power steering, and airbags would be inactive.

Under "normal" circumstances, this wasn't a problem.
But for the folks with a christmas tree hanging off of their key, it was a chance to turn off their car while driving.

(side note : Crying about the power steering and power brakes really misses the big issue : The steering lock can kick in while moving... which apparently no one gave enough of a crap about to think for the 2 seconds it takes to notice that elephant in the room)



In this case, the contention over whether or not the core problem with the key socket was negligence boils down to semantics.

Car companies buy their parts from sub contractors.
They spec out the parts, and sub contractors manufacture the parts 'to spec'.

The spec isn't a 'hard' requirement.
If you say "5 Newtons of force", that doesn't mean that 4.999999999999123 Newtons is unacceptable.

Actually, it's standard for ~all parts to not be exactly the spec. They just have to be 'close enough to work right'.

And for that matter, many of the numbers in various specs are 'off the cuff' values that are 'generally known to work fine'. Getting hung up on a specific number isn't salient - what matters is 'does it work right?'.

So the question becomes, what is "good enough to work right?".
In practice, that ends up being a judgment call. Often made by engineers that try out the parts.


Here's where congress and GM differed.

Congress said : The ignition socket wasn't 100% exactly what GM had in the spec that they sent to the subcontractors, so it was wrong from day 1, and they knew it wasn't 100% the spec since pre-production. Hence, GM was negligent.

GM said : Of course it wasn't 100% exactly the spec. That was to be expected. At the time, we had no indication that the actual provided part was so far out of spec that it would not work right.


My personal take :
If this was something as simple as 'actual malfunctions/breakages of parts', then it would be black and white.
But in these cases, nothing was actually broken or malfunctioning.
So you had to rely on statistics and analysis to identify the issue.
Statistics require data, data requires evidence, evidence requires time to collect.
Seeing as how the vast majority of cars had no problem, this isn't the kind of thing that just leaps out at you.

Since any given car, when made in massive quantities, will have all kinds of multiple complaints about multiple systems, you can't just go back and point at incident(s) X and Y and say that it was the smoking gun - because if it was, then you'd have a pile of smoking guns for every other part out there.
Every instance of every part has a small chance of going bad, and with enough cars, you'll have a lot of 'item A went bad' reports to sift through.
You can't jump to the conclusion after the first couple reports that the part is improper, and it's unrealistic to expect anyone to immediately make that conclusion.
In order to make an informed determination, you simply need a pattern to emerge.

(I listened to the CSPAN coverage of the hearings while driving.)

-scheherazade

Poor girls....idiots...but damn airbags are not fun.

I suspect they do it like cutting fabric -- turning the pieces to fit snugly. I'll bet there is less waste than you think.

There is waste -- either in the cutting or in the box itself.

I wonder if shipping costs are affected positively by a smaller box.

I also thought -- boy, if you pack with ghost poop, you don't want that box popping open like that. You'll want to use the airbags instead.

Most cars now have their hazards come on with any airbag deployment, probably same idea.

Explosions are fast. I wonder if an airbag explosion would be dangerous at that proximity without the bag to contain it.

Also the side airbags appear to fully deploy before the glass has even finished breaking.

Impressive stuff.

I didn't know they still made cars with horns you could activate by just pressing the center of the steering wheel. Every late model car I've driven has those stupid little buttons right where your thumbs would be if you drove with your hands at 5 and 7 for some reason. The rest is airbag,

The camera zooms out.

On a more general note: These sort of videos are what they are; one side of the argument. Nothing more. Nothing less. This shows a very direct incident. The problem with other methods of energy creation (mainly burning fossil fuels) is that the majority of the casualties are from indirect incidents. Pollution causing a loss of fertility in the breeding population would be a good example of where a population could be massively affected, but it wouldn't be obvious what was happening and there wouldn't be the opportunity for such an attention grabbing video.

No-one is saying these wind turbines are perfect, but despite what we see in this video we'd need data from both sides of the equation to make an informed decision. What might ave been catastrophic for that bird may actually be the saviour of the species.

In the same way there are people who have been permanently deafened by airbags or injured or even killed by tem going off accidentally in cars. But I'm pretty sure no sane person would argue that they are a harmful addition to a car as they have demonstrably saved many, many thousands of lives. What we're seeing in this video is the equivalent of watching an airbag go off when it shouldn't a causing a crash. It's a terrible thing for sure, but without the overall figures you can't say it means airbags are bad (or good).

This is one of the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions, either MER-A Spirit or MER-B Opportunity.

The earlier Mars Pathfinder mission also used airbags to land the Sojourner rover in 1997.

"Fortunately the airbags deployed and nobody was seriously injured."