One of these photos reminded me of a question I wanted to ask:



That little well that goes back from the from wheel... I wonder if anything would be gained aerodynamically if there were actually a vent in the fender behind the wheel to let that go somewhere. It looks almost as if it was meant for that, but then they decided not to vent it.

Matt

 

there are a lot of rollovers by the look of it.

 

lots of people who don't know how to drive RWD vehicles from the looks of it. Looks like a good place if you need a new trunk or dash or something.

 

Not necessarily a bad thing! Really an airbag should be designed not to go off unless it can save injury in that particular crash. Without knowing the details (ie severity of frontal impact, injuries) it's hard to say. I'd bet that a couple people walked away unharmed from those wrecks, and in that case airbag deployment would only be a bad thing.

First, airbags cause injuries of their own. At minimum you'll end up with some chemical burns, possibly broken bones if your hands are out of position. Second, airbags cost $$$$ to replace, unnecessary deployment just drives everyone's insurance up. Third, an airbag that deploys for a small or non-frontal primary hit will not be armed for any secondary larger hits (ie car spins, taps median lightly, stops facing oncoming traffic and gets rammed head-on).

Really the airbag sensor should measure the severity of the frontal component of impact, and deploy once it crosses a certain threshold. IMO it's good to see that more and more cars have a higher threshold these days, and use things like emergency seatbelt pre-tensioners to manage smaller impacts. In every case I've seen where the owner is upset their airbags didn't deploy, wants to sue etc- they were not actually injured in a way the airbag would have prevented. Hmm, let me think about that

Peter

 

I was just going to make a comment about all of the rollovers as well, but looks like somebody beat me to it.

That's just crazy that there are so many with a car with this low of a center of gravity.

 

I just witnessed my [good driver] insurance rates jump again ...

As for xmatt's question regarding venting the front fender well...I believe mastergrade has such a modded fender product offered. PM tims2k for pics of his car with his mastergrade fenders installed. Others have done this as metal bodywork to their OEM fenders once or twice I've seen on this board as well. Kinda neat .

My only *happy* comment to all those pics is how well the cockpit seems to nearly consistently survive S2000 wrecks .

- Dave