You may have heard conflicting reports about injuries involving air bags. Perhaps you are thinking of buy a car with plenty of safety features as a means of reducing you auto insurance premium. Well, please do so. Insurance companies do give reductions for certain cars that have safety features because, in the event of an accident, people are less likely to be badly injured or killed.

I have had personal experience with people who have had horrendous accidents, the cars are wrecked, but the people come away largely unscathed because of the quality of the safety features. They have rolled the cars at speed, and crawled out only bruised. Worse injuries occur on sports fields most weekends.

These young people probably had those accidents because they were driving too fast as they are all reckless young men. But that is not the point. What we are discussing here is the benefit of safety features like air bags.

Although you may have heard of people being injured and even killed by air bags, there are usually explanations for this that illustrate that the behavior of the individuals prevented the air bags from working properly. People who die are usually not wearing seat belts; as a result, at the time of impact they are catapulted forward into the airbag which must inflate with explosive force in order to be in place when needed. Unfortunately, if you are on top of the air bag as this occurs, serious injury or death is possible.

When you think about the force with which that air bag inflates and bursts out of its casing, injury is not surprising. Most people would rather end up looking as though they had been punched in the face than have themselves slammed against the windscreen or dashboard. If you had a choice between suffering cracked ribs as a result of an encounter with an air bag or being impaled on a steering wheel, it should be an easy decision and these are the options.

So, if you are buying a new car, go ahead and buy the one with the safety options. Make sure you get the best out of the air bags and ABS braking system by wearing a seat belt at all times. Don’t hunch over the steering wheel; sit at least 10 inches back and the impact of the air bag will be less damaging to you.

Above all, put the children in their child seats or restraints in the back seat at all time. It makes me so anxious to see loving parents traveling in cars with unrestrained children especially when they are in the front seat. For one thing you cannot hold that child tight enough in the event of a crash, but even worse is the position of the child relative to the air bag.

Talk your auto insurer about the impact of a car loaded with safety features on the insurance premium. If they are not interested in discussing the issue, move on. There will be an insurer out there who values your approach to safe driving.