Half a Million “Unexpected Deployments”?

You may have heard that Honda is having to recall about 441,100 Odyssey minivans on account of a “software defect” with the air bag system that could lead to “unexpected deployments” triggered by the system mistaking a pothole strike pr ther such jostling for an impact. The recalled Odysseys were made between January 2017 and June 2022. Apparently, only a small percentage of these vans actually have the defect – but given the potentially grave consequences of an “unexpected deployment,” better safe than sorry.

Speaking of that . . .

“Safety” is something that is rather hard to objectively pin down. It is question of risk assessment, when all is said and done. Which raises the question: Who gets to decide what constitutes an actual vs. a subjective risk – and also what safeguards ought to be put into place to reduce the risk? It’s a question we’re not allowed to answer for ourselves, of course. That would require the government respecting us as adults rather than treating us as children in need of parenting. For at least the past 60 years, it’s been the latter. It began in the ’60s, when the government decided it couldn’t be left up to us whether to buy seatbelts in a new car.

Seatbelts had been available as an option for years in some cars prior to the requirement that all new vehicles must have them. It was not enough, in other words, that they were available. American adults could not be permitted to weigh the risks against the costs and decide for themselves. Inevitably, the federal government began to insist that adults wear the seatbelts they were effectively force to buy, too.

Of course. It is a logical progression. Accept as legitimate the one thing and it is very difficult to argue against the legitimacy of the next thing. This truism is derided as the “slippery slope” argument but it is no less true on account of such derision.

In fact, the derision is used to catcall the truth.

Well, time passed and – the legitimacy of forcing people to buy (and to wear) seatbelts having been accepted, it became inevitable that air bags would go from being an available optional to mandatory. It is not generally known that people once had the choice to buy air bags – or not. Most chose not. Just as – once upon a time – most Americans chose not to “buckle up” for “safety.” What you think of this choice is – ought to be – as irrelevant as what you think about what other people decide to eat for lunch. A Whopper with cheese carries with it certain risks. But no one is forced to eat a Whopper. Nor should anyone be forcibly prevented from eating one – or punished for choosing to eat one. Because it is no one else’s got-damned business. Or ought not to be, if “free country” is something other than cause for snickering.

Since it no longer is a free country, it is only by dint of the government not having gotten around to it yet that we’re still allowed to eat Whoppers – and not yet force to do calisthenics every morning. You do have to buy the air bags – assuming you decide to buy a new vehicle.

While this is effronterous – for the same reason it would be regarded as effronterous by most people to be told they must eat their veggies – it is also something worse because air bags (like seat belts) are not without their own risks – as this recall and the many other recalls (including the grand daddy of all air bag recalls, the Takata recall, which involved some 76 million vehicles) objectively establishes. There were a number of “unexpected deployments,” some of which resulted in deaths.

But the overall risk was slight!

So say our parents in government – as well as those who agree with them. This is really something. Marvel at the glib arrogance of the thing. The causal, supercilious dismissal of the risks imposed on us. The italics are used to emphasize what arguably ought to be the thing that decides the matter. It is one thing to leave adults free to choose whether to assume a risk and another thing to impose risks – however slight – on adults. If a grown-up person chooses (if he were allowed the choice) to buy and drive a new vehicle without air bags and he ends up crashing and suffers injuries that might have been prevented by an air bag, then he knows the injuries he suffered were the result of his own choice. There is grown-up dignity in this.

Now consider the position of the person who is injured – maybe killed – by an “unexpected deployment” of an air bag he was forced to buy. Put another way, consider that this person would not have been injured had he not been forced to buy an air bag that “unexpectedly deployed.” There is degradation in that – in addition to the injury.

Are we not men? So asked the Sayer of the Law in H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Apparently not.

. . .

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