It is not enough, apparently, that almost every new vehicle comes standard with at least six air bags.
So now it’s time for rear seat center air bags – to cushion the people riding in the back from impacting each other in the event of a side-impact crash. This is on top of the side-impact air bags already built into the doors (or seats) of almost every new vehicle. Plus the driver and front seat passenger air bags and – in many new vehicles – a bag in between those two bags for anyone who might be riding in between the driver and front seat passenger, as in a pick-up truck or SUV. There are also knee bags and curtain bags and even bags built into the backs of the front seats.
Because – like doin’ right’ – “safety” ain’t got no end.
The cost of all these bags probably amounts to what a basic car used to cost, before there were any air bags in cars. When the Ford Pinto was introduced – back in 1970 – its base price was just under $2,000. That is less than what it costs today to have just two air bags replaced, if they deploy. Never mind what they cost to buy – when you buy the car.
Some will retort that $2,000 back then isn’t the same as what $2,000 is today – and that’s true. According to the government’s dubiously trustworthy inflation calculator, $2,000 in 1970 dollars requires about $17,000 dollars in 2026, to replicate the equivalent buying power. But, here’s the thing. If you own a late-model, air-bag-equipped vehicle that’s five or six years old that you originally bought for $30,000 that’s now worth less than $17,000 – due to depreciation – it is likely to be totaled by the insurance mafia if it’s involved in a relatively minor accident, on account of the disproportionate cost of replacing the air bags that went off – relative to the “book value” of the vehicle.
Here it is important to remember that the insurance mafia lobbied hard for making air bags mandatory in every new vehicle. Isn’t that special? First, you’re forced – effectively – to spend thousands more on an air bag-equipped vehicle and forced (effectively) to spend much more on insurance for the air bag-equipped vehicle due to its higher repair/replacement costs (belying the lie that “safer” cars would cost less to insure) and then we’re effectively forced to throw away what are often otherwise repairable vehicles – because the insurance mafia says it’s too expensive to replace the air bags and fix the other accident damage.
Damage to sheetmetal used to be worth fixing relative to the value of the vehicle, shy of severe accidents. Adding on several thousand bucks on top of that to replace the air bags – and everything the air bags destroyed as they went off, such as the entire dashboard – is often not.
The likelihood that a late-model, air0bag-equipped vehicle will be totaled by the insurance mafia – which gets to decide this, according to its own standards – increases as a vehicle ages and depreciates. That $30,000 brand-new vehicle you bought back in 2020 will have depreciated to a book value of $10,000 or even less by the time it is ten years old – which is not very old for any vehicle made since the ’90s. Vehicles now routinely provide reliable service for 15-20 years or even longer. The average age of a vehicle currently in service is 13-plus years old. Such a vehicle could probably be driven for another decade. It could be handed down to a kid or sold to someone who needs a good used vehicle.
But if its air bags go off in a relatively minor accident – one that the car could still be driven away from – it will almost certainly be totaled by the insurance mafia, leaving its owner with a consolation check with which he might be able to use for a down payment on a brand-new $30,000 vehicle.
The second worst aspect of this bag business – after the forcing of them into all new vehicles – is the inevitable rip-tide effect that leads to more and more bags, as each vehicle manufacturer tries to outdo the others by adding more air bags. Look! says Mercedes. Our vehicles not only have air bags in the doors and in the dashboard and in the steering wheel but also in between the rear seats! BMW quickly follows suit. Then Hyundai – and before you know it, every new vehicle has these in-between bags because no vehicle manufacturer wants to be perceived as less “safe” than the others. There is also the practical aspect; i.e., the adding of the new bag before the government requires the new bag to be added. 
There is also, of course. money to be made – by making people pay for all these air bags. It is the main driver of Air Bag Mania.
And to think it all began with a bag.
Her name is Joan Claybrook – and the old bag (she’s almost 90) is still alive. Claybrook was one of “Nader’s Raiders” – i.e., a Safety Freak but something more than that. She – like Nader, who is also still alive – is a control freak. “Safety” is the favorite excuse for control used by these freaks. 
Neither could abide air bags being available as optional equipment that could be purchased by people who wanted to purchase them. No. They had to be made mandatory – by the government. Claybrook pushed for it and another bag – Bob Doooooooooooole’s wife – saw it made so, per Captain Picard.
And now we’re all stuck with these bags.
. . .
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[…] https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2026/01/12/an-air-bag-in-between/ […]
I got in a head on wreck on Sunday January 11th 2026, the airbags went off, the insurance company is going to total the truck (2006 Nissan Frontier king cab XE 4×2) I have decided to buy it back from the insurance company for $800.
The worst damage is the drivers inner fender, I think I can pull it out though.
I can’t stand to see it scrapped aa I really like the truck.
Morning, SCW!
Sorry to hear about this; glad you’re ok – and hope you can save the truck. I would do the same for mine.
Right on Eric great video I’ve experienced this first hand. A couple years ago my car got hit (other driver admitted fault documented police report etc…) just dented the front end and radiator but because the air bag went the off the driver’s insurance company wanted to total the car I wasn’t having it we bought the car back/did an owner retain which we got a smaller claim check because of that but we replaced the damaged parts and it still continues to be a great car.
Hey, since the Feds (and vehicle manufacturing) are all gung-ho about safety, how about requiring drivers and said passengers to wear diapers on their back sides? You know, in case they crash and lose their sh**. Maybe I should not give them any ideas…
It’s crazy, that some people say, “I am not against airbags… I am against airbag insanity.”
Have they not seen the damage done to people by these airbags? Eye sockets knocked out, etc,? Psft. Are they clueless & ignorant? Idk.
It’s all right up there with saying, “I’m not anti-vax” in spite of all the evidence of the destruction to human bodies that “vaccines” do to people. Ignorance, beyond measure!
By all means, if you want a cobra venom mixed drink, bottoms up.
George Thorogood ‘Who Do You Love’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le2iA8203sQ
‘Who Do You Love’ ???
Airbags were optional equipment in the 1970’s when they were invented. They were an expensive option so almost none were sold. Most were discontinued. Keep in mind that seatbelts had only been mandated less than a decade before that. Unfortunately, that had begun the safety cult forcing things into our cars so it was only a matter of time.
RE: “Airbags were optional equipment in the 1970’s when they were invented. […] that had begun the safety cult.”
Maybe so. Howevah: here in flyover country, the safety cult didn’t get a foothold until well into the ’80’s. Ihmo, it had Nothing to do with airbags.
Rather: it’s all about, Power and Control.
Plane and simple.
I didn’t listen to this whole bit ( I’m getting tired) the opening seems true? Idk.
‘Power, Control and Narcissists’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlvEiC4yMW0
I am not against airbags… I am against airbag insanity.
My wife hit a deer with an 8-year old car. Although the front clip was heavily damaged, no major components were damaged and I was able to drive the car home from the accident.
But the knee airbag deployed. Insurance totaled the car. I took the money, bought the car back from them, and fixed it myself.
The biggest hassle was not replacing the metal and busted plastic with junkyard parts, and hiring a glassman for the windshield. The biggest hassle was the kneebag. It is illegal in my state to buy a used airbag from a junkyard, you are supposed to buy one from the dealer for $500. (I managed to “find” a used one for $75).
But that’s the least of your problems. The airbag module permanently records the deployment, and you are then supposed to buy a new module from the dealer ($700) and then pay the dealer additional money to reprogram it.
When the airbag deploys, it also sets of the seatbelt pre-tensioner, which then renders the seat belt useless. You are supposed to buy another factory replacement unit from a dealer for another $400-500.
(Mind you, this is without paying labor to have them install the bag and the module and seatbelt).
If your airbag module throws a code, you can still drive the car but NONE of your airbags will deploy. In my case the more important airbags in the steering wheel and passenger dash were rendered useless by the less-important kneebag deployment. You can’t just live without a kneebag and still have the rest of the system function (which is stupid, because the previous model year of the exact same car did not have a kneebag).
I managed to source a seatbelt for $75, and found a place on the internet that reprogrammed my module for only $75. That sounded sketchy, but I sent it in and it turned out to be 100% legit.
So I got the car back on the road. Fixing the airbag system (not counting the other bodywork) and returning it to functionality only cost me $225, but it would have been at least ten times that amount if a shop did it the “legal” way.
I can never sell the car to anyone but a salvage yard, because it has been totaled and the state would require a $200 inspection plus full documentation and proof of replacing the airbag system with all dealer parts in order to issue me a transferable salvage title.
It was a lot of bullshit to go through for something that was mechanically a fairly easy job — the kneebag is the easiest airbag of them all to replace. Two nuts and a harness. If you deploy the steering wheel bag you have to also install a new clockspring, and if your passenger bag goes off you have to replace the entire upper dash cover plus the bag.
It’s crazy.
Oh, I almost forgot. To make matters even more complicated, there is a pyrotechnic charge in your collapsible steering column on newer cars. When the steering wheel airbag goes off, the column charge will also deploy to make the column easier to collapse.
The “correct” and state-approved way of fixing this is to not only replace the wheel bag and the clockspring with new parts, but to also replace the entire fucking steering column with a factory-new unit, which is, let us put it mildly, mucho dinero.
There are ways to fix those steering columns yourself, but it’s a real bitch and it’s not approved for a collision shop to fix them, only replace them.
Thankfully I did not have that problem with my car, but you can see how the repair costs can easily get completely out of control for what would otherwise have been fixable damage.
Crazy, and a crazy nightmare to deal with. These are the “devil in the details” BS now ingrained in modern America. Cars, work, small business, education and on it goes.
The lower income folks with a totaled car, now what? That car got them to their sh**ty job. Thanks to the airbag deployment it’s now totaled / undriveable unless you’re handy enough to remove the mess, fix the collision damage and drive on with a patched up mess of a car. The insurance pay off not enough to get at least replacement transportation and without the means to pay more money – ???
The economics of depreciation says your old car near worthless, however to you personally it’s priceless transportation and possibly vital to continued employment. Thanks safety cult.
Indeed, Sparkey –
My ’02 Nissan Frontier’s “book value” is prolly around $4k, if that. But it’s worth more than that to me – because I have taken excellent care of it and know it’s likely to provide reliable service for another decade or more. It’s paid-off and it costs me next to nothing to own. Someone hits me, the bag goes off – and it’s most assuredly “totaled.”
Same situation as mine. My four-door sedan, with a stick, bought new, was totaled but priceless to me, so I kept it and managed to fix it. Although the insurance company gave me a fair amount relative to what I paid for the car, it was still less than a third of what it would have cost me to by a brand-new car to replace it with.
If it’s any consolation, it’s my understanding that in Virginia it is much easier to fix a car with a deployed bag than it is in my state, and does not require state inspection if you fix it yourself. My local garage buys rust-free Virginia accident cars and fixes them, that is what he told me.
Why stop with air bags? Have the entire car fill up with foam like in ‘Demolition Man’ 😆
THIS INFORMATION IS FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE QUALIFIED TO DO SO.
Airbag disconnection is technically illegal under federal law but it can be done easily and safely.
You will need tools to disassemble the steering wheel and will also need a volt-ohm meter. Additional parts needed will be a 100K potentiometer, used to determine the resistance value needed to turn off the airbag light. Connect the center and one of the side lugs on the potentiometer to the airbag vehicle connector, NOT to the airbag itself.
1. Disconnect the vehicle battery and wait 15 minutes for the airbag circuit capacitors to discharge.
2. Remove the airbag from the steering wheel and unplug the airbag connector.
3. Reconnect the vehicle battery and connect the potentiometer to the vehicle airbag connector.
4. Rotate the potentiometer shaft until the airbag light goes out.
5. Disconnect the potentiometer from the airbag circuit.
6. Using the volt-ohm meter, measure the resistance of the potentiometer center and side lug.
7. Obtain a fixed-value resistor of the same resistance value (ohms) and attach it to the connector.
8. Reinstall the airbag without plugging in the connector.
IMPORTANT! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MEASURE THE RESISTANCE OF THE AIRBAG DIRECTLY. IT WILL DEPLOY IF YOU USE THE VOLT-OHM METER TO ATTEMPT TO MEASURE AIRBAG RESISTANCE DIRECTLY.
Why 100K pot? Most airbag squibs are going to read a couple (as in single digit) ohm range.
If you have a scan tool most ECUs in the past 10 or so year report the actual value it reads.
They check the value in the exact same way as a multimeter does, by passing a small current through the circuit and reading the voltage drop.
Most DMMs have an input impedance in the megaohms and so only need microamps to read resistance. Fluke meters use values such as 10uA on the zero to 40K range and 0.1uA on the zero to 4M range. That’s 0.1 x 10 to the minus 6 amps, which is more than 1 million times lower than the current needed to trigger the air bag.
You are not taking any more risk doing it with a tool than the ECU is taking.
What can theoretically trigger an airbag igniter is static electricity. That’s why they provide shorting bars to prevent this. If you’re not handling the airbag properly with respect to grounding and dissipating static then you are taking an additional risk.
But even that isn’t a guaranteed trigger since a static discharge may be very high voltage it does always not have a lot of energy, maybe not enough to actually cause any heating to trigger. That depends on the source of the static, e.g. how much capacitance is available to store the high voltage charge.
To mimic an airbag you usually use a large power resistor. You don’t need to handle much power for the test circuit to be happy but if you are in a crash and the airbag driving circuit does drive current the voltage and current could be large. A typical airbag driver is actually around 30V and could be a couple of amps. So you don’t want the test resistor you’re using to heat up and start a fire. You’d probably want to use a 50W or 100W wire wound like you’d use in speaker cross-overs and such.
BTW, most ECUs are measuring impedance (e.g. the complex components of capacitance and inductance along with any real resistance) and not just DC resistance. They do this but using a pulsed current, typically around 40mA at about 5 Hz. Some can tell if a resistor has been placed in the circuit because the impedance of a 2 ohm resistor might be different than a 2 ohm squib circuit. So you might have to use a different resistor value to mimic this, perhaps in the range of 4 to 6 ohms.
But whatever, wallow in your urban myths.
Hi Manny.
While I own a couple Fluke multi meters, most people don’t. I’m guessing that there is a slight chance that an older analog meter might induce sufficient current to create an exiting situation.
I base my actions on sound engineering, not your questionable “engineering”. I’ll bet you are a college-degreed engineer with no real-world experience.
Go ahead and read the resistance of the airbag directly BOOM!
I’ve done many airbag deletes over the years utilizing my method and stand by my statements. My method works…
Your engineering is faulty. It doesn’t take much current to trigger an airbag squib.
Message to Manny followers. If you use his method, the results won’t be pretty.
Regardless, with something as dangerous as an air bag, do NOT take any chances. If you don’t know what your DMM puts out or if you don’t KNOW what it takes to trigger the bag inflator, or if you don’t understand antistatic grounding, please be REALLY careful!
Ive scrapped dozens of cars, and have triggered a number of air bags to see them work. It scared the HELL out of me, and one of them I leaned against a fence and put a 1 lb rock in front of, which promptly bent the chain link fence and launched the rock about 50 feet.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the danger of an air bag.
You can look me up, friend. You are correct that I have a degree in electrical engineering. Some of my employers have been TRW and Ford.
I do not know what you do. However if you’re using 100K pots to mimic the squib you’re not electrically savvy.
Even an analog Simpson 260 VOM on it’s lowest resistance range (zero to 2k) is only sourcing 125mA short circuit at 1.5V. This meter uses a D-size cell for the lowest range and requires significant power to drive the bridge and meter.
Digital meters do not do this, they are driving the input of an ADC so require only enough power so they have a reasonably decent signal-to-noise performance. This is why a 9V battery lasts for months or years in them.
I do not recommend doing any of what “anarchyst” is suggesting. Just pointing out that this person is incorrect on several details so one might question the technique.
It appears that you are missing the point. A potentiometer is used to establish a resistance value that turns off the airbag light, nothing more. Once the correct resistance value is determined by measuring resistance between the wiper (center terminal) and end, a fixed-value resistor is used to complete the job.
Did you know that you can precisely create a custom value of resistor with a file?
If I get into a wreck, my car will fold like a cheap suit and break into a million pieces like glass, but atleast I have more airbags to keep me safe.
If the government is so obsessed with our safety why are they spraying chemtrails overhead, starting wars, sending out goons with shoot to kill orders, and this:
California’s issued 17,000 commercial truck driver’s licenses to foreign truckers.
IOW they just handed out CDLs to anyone illegal that applied, with no certification, and some of them probably can’t read english
Jack, you misspelled “most” as “some”.
Minnesota is likely worse, there are hundred of videos on YouTube with Minnesota State Troopers facing off with Somalians hauling insanely overloaded rigs of every description. I despise both the Somalians and the Communisota enforcers, not sure who to root for there.
I was on a rescue call a couple months ago, and dozens of green semis (you know who you are, Tranny Systems) all stopped with fresh Africans driving them, none able to speak a single word of english. They couldnt even go around the scene on county roads because all they can do is follow a GPS navigator.
‘Adding on several thousand bucks to replace the airbags’ — eric
Why not just exempt accident-damaged autos from airbag replacement, at the owner’s option?
Now you maff whizzes know that having been in one accident does not change the posterior probability of having another accident — just as flipping four heads in a row with a penny doesn’t change the likelihood of flipping a fifth head. But a lot of people intuitively think it does, just as they think an accident-free record axiomatically extrapolates into the future.
What a lark, lobbying rum-soaked state legislators to drop airbag replacement for wrecked vehicles. We can do this! The Mafia might even approve. But auto makers and dealers would howl like stuck pigs. 🙁
I know, Jim!
PS: When I get done with the Trans-Am, I am going to remove the got-damned air bag from the steering wheel in the ’02 Nissan Frontier. I want to see whether it is possible to replace the ugly blob with a spare Trans-Am Formula steering wheel I have on the garage wall. Damn the Safety Cult and all who ride with it!
The splines from the old TA may be standard dimensions and the Frontier’s are probably metric. Be careful with that…just ask Ayrton Senna!
I’ve had good luck cutting the hub out of an old stock wheel, chucking it in my lathe, and making an (bolt on) adapter. If the old Formula wheel has a bolt on center, it’s easy.
LMK, if you want mail it off to me and I’ll do it.
Thanks, Ernie!
I may be in touch after I get the TA back together. Got the flywheel today, by the way!
‘$2,000 in 1970 requires about $17,000 in 2026, to replicate the equivalent buying power.’ — eric
As we all know, this is because of Federal Reserve counterfeiting. Finally, prosecutors are on the case:
Federal Prosecutors Open Investigation into Fed Chair Powell — NYT headline
That ought to stop the currency presses! But — oh, wait! — the suspected offense is illegal building renovations, not counterfeiting.
This is like prosecuting Jeffrey Epstein for littering. 🙁
Right on cue — as the Orange Oaf makes clear that he wants an ‘easy money’ stooge to lead the Fed — the old yellow dog [gold] cranked to a new record of $4,630/oz.
Gold is Trump’s kryptonite.
And — holy shit — Doctor Copper is over six dollahs a pound.
Why work when you can strip buildings for copper cable?
Eric wrote, “Here it is important to remember that the insurance mafia lobbied hard for making air bags mandatory in every new vehicle. Isn’t that special? First, you’re forced – effectively – to spend thousands more on an air bag-equipped vehicle and forced (effectively) to spend much more on insurance for the air bag-equipped vehicle due to its higher repair/replacement costs (belying the lie that “safer” cars would cost less to insure) and then we’re effectively forced to throw away what are often otherwise repairable vehicles – because the insurance mafia says it’s too expensive to replace the air bags and fix the other accident damage”
THIS is the essence of Fascism. That is, corporations teaming up with GovCo to the benefit of both and the detriment of all others.
And, I’m always reminded of the article in AutoWeek in the spring of ’74 when they reported on tests done in Sweden that showed the deadly effects of children and small adults being too close to the airbag explosion. The concussion killed 8 of 24 test subjects (piglets…can you imagine using live animals for testing today?).
The world has changed and not for the better thanks to the Marxist/Environmentalists.
You know with the popularity of cars and SUVs that don’t have a separate trunk; how long will it be before they mandate one for in there in case a collision flings all that stuff into the passenger compartment?