>> ^grinter:

>> ^westy:
I know these devises work and are excellent.
however in this case I think its highly unlikely she would have been seriously hurt /substaintaily berried without the bag.
The snow didn't have much of a chance to brake up and envelop here and was mostly large chunks rolling down the hill side , not giving much of an opertunity for the bag to really function.
obviously someone can die stuck under just a small amount of snow , There are far far more impressive demonstrations of the technology actually working with dummies falling down huge mountines in massive avalanches.

Do you have a link to one of those demos?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I would feel much safer if I could wear airbags all the time.

>> ^PoweredBySoy:

Wimpy avalanche.
Well... from the camera's perspective, anyway. Probably scary as hell to be in it.

>> ^westy:

I know these devises work and are excellent.
however in this case I think its highly unlikely she would have been seriously hurt /substaintaily berried without the bag.
The snow didn't have much of a chance to brake up and envelop here and was mostly large chunks rolling down the hill side , not giving much of an opertunity for the bag to really function.
obviously someone can die stuck under just a small amount of snow , There are far far more impressive demonstrations of the technology actually working with dummies falling down huge mountines in massive avalanches.

Do you have a link to one of those demos?

To take simple joy in the launching of a person with an airbag, that is living...

There must have been a non-LRU upgrade this year; a recall for faulty airbags perhaps?

I meant exactly what I wrote; I was evoking the image of a priest being ordained in his robes.


Yeah, that sentence above doesn't parse right either. You can be ordained, and you can be in robes, but you don't really "ordain something in robes". You just don't. Maybe "shrouded in vestments"? Feel free to disagree with me on this, it obviously doesn't matter.

My point, continuing a previous conversation with gwiz, is that people put faith in science much as religious people put faith in religion.


I'd say they put way, way more faith in science than religion. And they're right to: science brings us all kinds of amazing things every day. When I get on a plane, I'm relying on all sorts of science and engineering that I don't fully understand. My three year old knows to put chocolate milk in the fridge or it will go bad. People have long histories of relying on science and things working out. They have long histories of seeing something amazing, having no idea how it works, but later using that science and technology in their own lives.

If people got anywhere near that level of positive feedback from their religions, religion wouldn't be slowly dying in the developed world.

There are no legitimate demonstrations of quantum levitation that highlighted some of the features present here...


Well, yes, there's more stuff happening here than in previous demonstrations - but that's what people are used to with science; a progression of more features.

If it steps over the line, even a micron, it becomes pseudo-science. Yet you are willing to suspend your disbelief based on other past results you may not understand.


Very few people are going to understand all of the science and technology they use. I don't know how my anti-lock brakes work, or fully understand even the (what I assume is simple) tech in an airbag (what's the gas it inflates with? I don't know). And I may one day rely on those things to save my life. Almost anyone getting medical treatment is relying on very, very shakey knowledge of how the medicine or procedure actually works, or why things are done a specific way.

And they're not fools to do so. With science and technology, you can build a web of trust based on demonstrable results in the past. I know that there's standards bodies that test airbags, and medical associations that understand and approve procedures; I don't have to confirm this kind of thing personally on a case-by-case basis, nor could any one person fully understand all the technology in their lives. Hawking has to hire some tech guy to fix his voice box.

But that doesn't mean that things aren't tested or that there's "blind faith" involved. There's faith backed by reason.

Back to this video in specific: people may have thought this video was real, but very few would have sent off a cheque to buy one without knowing a lot more, without seeing it reported on by someone they have some trust in. And look at how fast it was brought down. How many people still believed after reading all the comments? Similarly, when scientists emerge trumpeting some new unlikely discovery, they're treated by other scientists with very appropriate and high levels of skepticism until their results are independently validated.

Could you benefit from a medium-term, important scientific hoax? Yes, with some real effort. But history has a lot more examples of people seeing big success using science for their religious hoaxes (from Greek temples on down to scientology). Even if people have the "amazing science" in hand with which to try to trick, they recognize where people's real blindspots are and aim for those.

>> ^Morganth:

Airbag propellant = gunpowder.


Sodiun Azide is used in airbags. Highly toxic and becoming an environmental problem.

Airbag propellant = gunpowder.

>> ^Raveni:

>> ^nock:
lol. Face -> horn -> face -> horn -> face.

That's actually the horn going off automatically when the airbags deploy.


There was no front-end impact. My airbag deployed a few months ago from the airbag control unit getting wet and shorting a circuit. The horn did not sound.

That was the last sign I needed to go buy a new car though...

>> ^nock:

lol. Face -> horn -> face -> horn -> face.


That's actually the horn going off automatically when the airbags deploy.

>> ^deathcow:

I can tell by your forehead that you drive FORD cars.


Used to have a 93 mustang. Till a soccer mom in an SUV pulled out in front of me and I nailed her. Airbag went off and instead of the plastic splitting for deployment the whole thing was ripped off. The force of the bag going off imprinted SRS and a little Mustang emblem from the plastic in to my forearm. To this day if I get a little sun or tan it shows up really bright.

>> ^doogle:

In what situation would I need to do this?
That would be helpful. Apart from "for fun".


Watch the video again, from the beginning, where it says "Indications." What follows is a list of situations in which this procedure is "indicated" (or "prescribed," or whatever layman's term for "you only do this when this situation occurs.") I can break them down for ya.

If you are ever in a situation where you find someone unconsious, with a pulse, but no signs breathing, you need to establish why they are not breathing. There are training videos and classes on this sort of thing, and I highly recommend everyone not only do so, but stay on top of new data and findings. Even just recently CPR guidelines have changed - mouth-to-mouth is only really necessary for drowning victims. Cardiac arrest is usually the cause of most instantaneous medical emergencies, and keeping steady chest compression rhythm to manually pump the heart is more important to saving the brain and oxygen-dependent tissues M2M breaths should only be administered once or twice every 30 compressions or so.

Anyway, to break things down:

"Severe Maxilofacial trauma" Nasty wounds to the jaw and mouth that prevent mouth-to-mouth or mouth-to-airbag contact.

"Severe Bleeding to the airway/oropharynx" Just another big word for hole on everyone's face that is their mouth extending back into their vocal chords. Blood and/or clotting is preventing breathing. CPR would force blood into the lungs in a bad way.

"Foreign matter in upper airway" They've got something lodged in their throat, far enough in that you can simply pull it out with your fingers, or you can't get them to a position to "heimlich" them (not that we use the Heimlich maneuver anymore - there's a similar, more modern-science-informed method).

"Edema secondary to burns to the face and airway" Edema is another word for swelling. Again, you can't mouth-to-mouth or to-airbag over burn wounds, and sometimes your throat can swell shut from burns, be they burns from fire or chemical.

The last couple should be self-explanitory.

What then follows are a list of "Contraindications" or situations in which you should AVOID this procedure. In medicine, these are important. For example, massaging someone's swollen legs after they just landed from an airplane flight is contraindicated, as leg swelling is a sign on deep-vein thrombosis. Failure to identify and accommodate contraindications will could lead to patient death exposing you to legal and civil liability. And the guilt of knowing you killed someone you were trying to help.

I'm not a doctor. I'm just a certified massage therapist with over 600 hours of training in massage-oriented anatomy, physiology, pathology and ethics, among other important lessons. I have no authority to make diagnoses.. But my massage school gave me enough information to know when I could potentially harm someone, and how to identify those situations should they arise in my practice.

The cop is probably more or less okay. He'll be sore with some soft tissue damage. He'll probably need to see a chiropractor, and he might have an injury to his knees.That's assuming he had an airbag in the car--I think I heard the pop as it deployed. It'll be very painful, but probably not anything you can't recover from.

I'm more worried about the driver of the van. Vehicles these days do really well with front-end collisions, with various safety features in the car design, including impact cages and airbags that pop at greater or less speed based on the speed of the collision. Side-impact collisions are a lot more dangerous. Even if there are airbags, the geometry of the car just won't stand up as well. People hit like that tend to be a lot more likely to sustain serious injury. Probably the biggest risk, assuming the driver was wearing their seat belt, would be the driver's head striking the door window. She would have at least a concussion, possibly serious injuries to her left leg, and soft tissue damage up and down the right side of her body.

I'm a customer service associate for a major insurance company. My job is basically to take new claims from people who have been in accidents. The good news is that since I've started the job, I've learned just how safe our cars are these days. It's relatively rare even with highway accidents that people are seriously injured as long as we're talking about something like straight on damage or a collision at an angle. (A head-on collision is obviously going to be a lot more dangerous. Fortunately, the van did come in at an angle, so the cop car didn't take nearly as much force as it could have.)

Side-impact collisions are what send people to the hospital these days. Drive careful, folks!