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When you purchased your car the government extracted by decree about $1800 from your wallet, plus applicable sales and other taxes, for the privilege of there being two airbags to protect the driver and a front seat passenger in the event of an accident. Your annual license renewal fee is based upon the total cost of your car. Those airbags will cost you money in perpetuity.
At the moment of impact your airbags deployed as per specification. A pound of destabilized sodium azide was exploded by an electrically-fired squib for each bag's ultra-rapid inflation. You were traveling at 88 feet/second. Your airbag came at you at more than 100 feet/second. Within a couple of thousandths of a second you hit the bag at 130 to 150 mph.
You were holding the steering wheel at the moment of deployment. Your forearms were broken as the bag expanded. As several cubic feet of nitrogen gas exploded into the sealed passenger compartment your eardrums burst. The bags are made to rapidly vent and deflate, accounting for the second degree burns you suffered as the nitrogen gas still hot from its chemical generation blasted your torso. Those two pounds of sodium azide (driver and passenger side, and probably closer to 2.5 lbs) not only deployed the nitrogen - which is why you are suffocating for lack of oxygen - but also belched a pound of what rapidly became sodium hydroxide (lye). That is why you have large area chemical caustic burns across your skin, and lost an eye and suffered lung damage as the hot caustic dust clawed through your left cornea and internal tissues. Decontaminating the inside of the car to make it again safe for human skin will be of questionable effectiveness.
As your rib cage impacted the expanding airbag your heart was bruised and your lungs suffered tissue rupture. Airbag-induced heart trauma killed Steve Allen several hours after he had a minor fender-bender. BOOM! The impact upon your chest directed your body to slide down through your lap belt, accounting for your broken knees. Replacing the airbag hardware after you leave the hospital will set you back $3000 or more for parts, labor and interior cleanup.
Had there been no airbags you would have been restrained by your lap and shoulder harness. The impact of your collapsible steering wheel into your chest would have caused at worst the breaking of ribs and some internal injuries. The damage thereby suffered would have been small compared to that caused by your "safety equipment" which came at you at nearly triple the speed that you were traveling in the first place, all the while vomiting hot lye. 43% of all airbag deployments cause serious injury - 163,000 people needlessly hurt (Consumers' Research 78(5) 31 (1995)).
Airbags are tremendously dangerous, even aside from accidental deployment. Sodium azide is about as toxic as potassium cyanide, and just as water soluble. As millions upon tens of millions of airbags are contained in junked cars, who will be responsible for the caretaking and safe disposal of tens of millions of explosive squib initiators and billions of human lethal doses of sodium azide? Azide in the presence of copper or lead forms copper azide or lead azide, which are contact high explosives. How lucky it is that there is no lead or copper in a junkyard, except for batteries and wiring, plated metal, seals, engine plugs...
Why aren't there airbags for the rear passengers? Four airbags exploding would literally burst a sealed passenger compartment, damaging its human contents like a pipe bomb. This is no problem. We need merely levy $50 (or $500) fines for driving with your windows rolled up. Government is safeguarding your life, even if it must protect you to death.
Otsuka Chemical of Japan patented an explosive propellant mixture of potassium perchlorate and azodicarbonamide which, weight for weight, produces 50% more gas and no hazardous byproducts (Jpn. Chem. Week 35(1770) 1994)). Japan produces two million airbag assemblies for export incorporation into US cars, all using toxic sodium azide. Japanese cars are only 6% airbagged. No racing car driver has ever used an airbag. What does all this tell you?
You car is a monument to government protection. Your engine is controlled by a microprocessor specifically detuned to government regulations. Your fuel is by government fiat diluted with methanol or ethanol, "oxygenates," which increase its corrosivity to everything it touches, increase its human toxicity, and increase its Reid vapor pressure (which begets air pollution with great effectiveness). Alcohol oxygenates in the presence of moisture phase separate into a heaver-than-gasoline water-rich liquids - and won't your fuel injectors like that? Gasohol is much more expensive than straight gasoline, so it is government- subsidized. Pay your taxes, sucker.
What does government gain by creating insane rules which act to relieve its citizens of an extra few tens of billions of dollars each year? It gains power and wealth. It gains the best protection money can buy.
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