The author | Mizuki Gong
The source | engaged in car zero distance
Is it worth respecting brands that adopt a "double standard" policy for consumers? #汽车科技要闻 #
Recently, another question about Tesla has been pushed to the forefront: some car owners shared their own car dismantling videos, and were surprised to find that their domestic Teslas are not equipped with knee airbags.
From Special Fee Electric Tesla ▲
Subsequently, the owner got a reply after calling 400 for consultation: "The knee airbag has a low effect on the safety of the whole vehicle."
Ibid
However, by querying the North American Model 3 owner's manual, the car jun found that the Tesla Model 3 is actually equipped with a knee airbag.
US model3 user manual ▲
The American Highway Safety Insurance Association IIHS (hereinafter referred to as IIHS) has done relevant research and tests on this issue, and finally found that the knee airbags do not improve the overall safety much.
The imported model3 also does not have a knee airbag▲
The test does not represent all road conditions, which is not recently a Tesla user on the highway accident: after experiencing a rear wheel break, being rear-ended by a large truck, and being pushed for 300m, the Tesla airbag curtain did not pop out. Although the person is fine, the owner has been frightened and confused.
Why aren't airbags ejected when being rear-ended? Is the knee airbag really useful? Today, che jun will come to talk to your friends about the air bag.
Airbags are arguably one of the most important safety initiatives in the field of automotive safety in recent decades. According to IIHS, front airbags have reduced the number of driver deaths in frontal collisions by 29 percent and the number of deaths for front-seat passengers over the age of 13 by 32 percent.
As an inflatable cushion built into the vehicle, it protects the occupants from being struck by objects inside the vehicle or outside the vehicle (e.g., other vehicles or trees) during a collision.
Almost all passenger cars need to be equipped with front airbags, and it is common to have one in each front and passenger compartment, with the main driver in the steering wheel and the co-pilot hidden in the trim on the right side of the center console.
The moment the collision begins, the sensor begins to measure the severity of the impact. If the collision is severe enough, the sensor signals to the inflator to fill the bag with gas in a few tenths of a second, causing the airbag to rapidly unfold at a speed of three hundred kilometers per hour, preventing the occupants of the car from being impacted.
Of course, most of the airbags are now electronic, and Tesla is no exception. There are no sensors in the rear of the car, so the general rear-end airbag is exploded.
"Prevent the occupants from being impacted?" Three hundred kilometers per hour so fast? The impact did not rush to the passengers, and the air bags hurt the passengers first!
Che Jun would like to say that the air bag is indeed a double-edged sword. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that between 1990 and 2008, more than 290 people died from frontal airbag inflating in low-speed collisions, with more than 80 percent of those killed by passengers without seat belts.
This data is a good illustration of the damage caused by airbags to the occupants of the car, and it also shows that seat belts are also the top priority in the car. So what did the car jun say so much, what about the knee airbags?
The main function of the seat belt is to fix the occupants in the car on the seat to avoid the occupants from "flying" in the event of a collision due to inertia.
Today's more advanced airbags also have seatbelt sensors. The sensors combine a special algorithm to determine whether the vehicle needs to expand its airbags.
For example, in general, when a vehicle hits a wall at a speed of 20 km/h, the front airbag is deployed for the occupants who are not wearing seat belts.
If the occupant wears the seat belt correctly, then most airbags will be deployed at a higher threshold (about 30 km/h).
Then such a design can also see the role of seat belts, which not only ensure the safety of the occupants in the low-speed car, but also to a certain extent to avoid the secondary damage of the airbags to passengers.
So briefly introduce the airbag and seat belt, and then please come out of our protagonist today - the knee airbag.
The role of the knee airbag can actually be equivalent to the seat belt. I believe that many people are not difficult to find that there are always some friends who do not love to wear seat belts when driving and riding.
Seat belt buckle "cheated" seat belt ▲
Then when these drivers or passengers encounter a rapid collision, the result is naturally conceivable. The knee airbag is precisely for this part of the people to serve, the car occupants who do not wear seat belts are fixed to the seats to avoid serious injuries.
IIHS studied real-world collision data from 14 states. They found that knee airbags did little to prevent injury for drivers and passengers with seat belts on (they reduced the overall risk of injury by about 0.5 percent), and that in some types of accidents, they increased the risk of calf injuries.
When Tesla conducts crash tests in the United States, it also needs to face these two situations, so it is equipped with knee air bags as standard to "cope" with the test.
In contrast, Tesla, which does not have knee airbags, also has excellent test results in Europe and China, so it can deliver to consumers outside the United States without knee airbags.
So is this matter so unavoidable?
As soon as the news of the airbag reduction spread, it attracted a lot of discussion among netizens.
Some netizens said that domestic car owners have "knelt for a long time", making people feel that we are bullied and will be reduced by various allocations.
There are also some netizens who are reasonable, thinking that there is no reason why there is no knee air bag, and volvo, which is known as the safest, does not necessarily have knee air bags in the whole series.
In the end, the reduction of allocation is not to reduce the cost, but to reduce the expectations of consumers.
Because of the reduction of a column collapse passat ▲
Chejun feels that laws and regulations are more like determining the lower limit of the product, so that the minimum standard is set for the product. But in order to get stuck in the rules to make a loophole to make products, is it a little too unauthentic?