Airbags In Your Checked Airline Luggage...No, It's Not Okay.

As anyone who's blown an airbag knows, replacing them is expensive. Apparently more so in Europe, because, according to the TSA Blog from the folks at the Transportation Security Administration, a  lot of Europeans are flying over here, buying the new bag, putting it in their checked luggage and flying home.

Trouble is that airbag actuators are on the list of hazardous materials prohibited from transport aboard passenger aircraft.

How come? Well, the same reason that Honda has recalled 800,000 of their cars and that now-retired Car and Driver Editor-at-Large Patrick Bedard pointed out that the airbag is the first safety device to carry a warning label that you could die using it properly.

Namely...it's an explosive that blows the bag (similar to a solid rocket booster, the TSA Blog tells us). 

Not safe in the cargo hold of an airliner...any sensible person can see that. But inches away from your face and chest? There's another agency of the government that has made that mandatory for the past 18 years.

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Honda Expands Airbag Recall; More Than 800,000 Cars In U.S., Total

Honda says driver's-side airbags in many of its 2001 and 2002 Honda and Acura vehicles could deploy with too much force, resulting in injury or death.

Tough guys will say "Hey, I can take a punch"...but that's not what Honda's talking about here. The force involved could shatter the inflator casing and send metal fragments flying through the airbag cushion material and into...well, you and your passengers.

Same basic principle as a grenade.

Honda says it's aware of a total of 14 incidents, with one fatality.

This is phase three of this recall. It began sixteen months ago with 4,000 cars, had 436,000 added to it in July 2009 and today 378,758 cars join the list.

Full details are in the official Honda news release.

Even when working properly, airbags are, as now-retired (damn!) Car and Driver Editor at Large Patrick Bedard once noted, the only safety device in our history that comes with a label warning that you could be killed using it properly. A decade ago, he wrote a series of columns about them before finally giving up. Here's the one that's been preserved online. If you have both children and a car with airbags, please...please read it.

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