Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I noticed two things of interest on my drive into work today. The first was that it is the middle of June, yet it was 52 degrees and rainy. Stupid Seattle weather!

The second thing I noticed is that my car horn is in a strange place on the steering wheel. If you look closely at the picture, the place you press to honk the horn is the same place that the airbag comes out. I’ve never been in an accident where the airbag is deployed, but if I am, I imagine my hand will likely be pressing the horn because some guy just cut me off.

So what would happen to my hand? I assumed that the smart engineers at Honda thought about this, but then I read this from one of those ask the experts forums:

[It is recommended] that drivers use caution not to have any portion of the arm, hand, or fingers over the airbag module at any time while driving … in particular, a maneuver to sound the car horn or brace against the steering wheel or dashboard just prior to an anticipated collision places the car occupants at particular injury risk.

If that’s true, you shouldn’t use your horn, because if that airbag goes off it’s going to hurt. Seems like bad design to me. The car horn buttons were placed where they are before airbags were invented, so it wasn’t a problem with the initial design. Rather, no one updated it when they added airbags. It seems smarter to have steering wheel triggers buttons for the horn, that you can honk without having to move your hand near the airbag.

If I ever design a car, that’s what I would do. That, and the car would fly, have auto-pilot, and an in-dash nachos dispenser. :-)