We all know that a particular deadly oversight on the part of the driver is the failure to use the seatbelt restraints provided (according to the DOT, seat belt use remains at 81%, virtually unchanged since 2003). Remember that airbags are meant only as a supplementary restraint system (hence, SRS), not the primary one. As anyone who has ever gone through an owner’s manual knows, the primary restraint system in your vehicle is the seat belts. It is through the use of seat belts that you can better reduce the severity of injury and increase your chances of surviving a crash. Federal law mandates that motor vehicle manufacturers install seat belt use reminders. Yes, you have all heard them.
Why, then, I wonder, do federal transportation officials make the installation of seat belts optional in school buses?
I don’t understand. Are they helpful in limiting injury and death, or not? If they are, and federal regulation mandates that the car itself reminds us to wear them, why shouldn’t the kids who ride in their buses to school have the option of buckling up?
One of the arguments against installing seat belts in school buses is that they are not as necessary in a school bus as they are in a regular non-commercial vehicle, since the kids are seated close together, the seats are well-padded the backs are high. So it is not even that they would not help, but that they would not help as much.
You are thinking that in a frontal accident, it is much safer to impact your head against another tall well well-padded seat back than it is to do it against a dashboard, steering wheel, or windshield. True. But if there were no protection benefits to seat belts in these conditions, why mandate their installation in rear seats for any vehicles? Also, what about side impacts and rollovers that the school bus may be involved in? Not all crashes are frontal, you know, we have all seen those in the news.
Finally, not giving the kids even the option to put on their seat belts sends the wrong message and undermines the importance of seat belt use later on. Maybe by making the installation of seat belts in school buses, the DOT can save millions later on in buckle up campaigns!
Automotive Scanner Could Be Good For The Environment
Using a car scanner or scan tool can be a big step in improving he air quality that we breathe. Why? Because you can see if an oxygen sensor in your car is starting to be faulty. A defective oxygen sensor can trick your car’s computer into running the car too rich or too lean. Then you can smell unburnt gas coming out of the exhaust pipe.
Using a scan tool like the Elmscan5 can help you locate the faulty sensor. Of course, you also need a desktop computer or laptop for reading the scan tool’s results. A good scanner will give you live results while the car is running on the road. This is the best way of testing various sensors or fuel injectors on your automobile. A footnote: The OBD22 system is designed to monitor the emissions performance of the engine.
You read the oxygen sensor or O2 sensor results like this: the voltage output of the O2 sensor should read a minimum of 0.1Volts (lean) and a maximum of 0.9 Volts (rich). A good oxygen sensor should produce an oscillating waveform at idle that makes voltage transitions between 0.1 and 0.9 Volts. A bad sensor could always be stuck at 0.45 Volts. If you look at the output of an oxygen sensor with an oscilloscope with a good sensor, you will see an oscillating waveform (sine wave).
With a very good OBD2 scan tool, you see the graph of the output of the sensor, like you were looking at the monitor of an oscilloscope. You must also see the voltage reading of all sensors, including the O2 sensors, with the smallest delay possible.
In conclusion, if you monitor your car’s engine emissions performance of the engine. You can replace faulty or near-faulty O2 sensors. You will gain performance of the engine because a car runs much better with a new oxygen sensor. You will burn less fuel, and you will pollute less in our precious atmosphere.