Last March, a Manitoba Public
Insurance employee was sent to the impound lot to make a final check of salvage
cars
to be auctioned later that day. He noticed that each one was missing its
airbags. Despite video surveillance and patrol
guards at the Winnipeg site, a thief or thieves broke into the lot and took
the airbags.
Two months later, 20 cars in the Milliken GO Transit train station in East Toronto had their airbags taken in one morning.
Three months after that, York
Region Constable Robert Plunkett was killed when he attempted to apprehend
two men who
were stealing airbags on a quiet Markham, Ont., cul-de-sac, which was being
staked out by police because of a rash of
airbag thefts.
Airbag theft is commonplace and,
according to police, getting worse. There are no reliable numbers for Canada,
but the
National Insurance Crime Bureau in the United States estimates airbag theft
cost Americans $50-million in 2003.
You can get 20 or 30 in a night; and, at $100 to $150 each, that's $2,000 to $4,500.
The problem is twofold — not
only are airbags easy to steal, the business is extremely lucrative.
"Airbags are the premier car
stereo of the new millennium," said George Iny, spokesman for the Canadian
Automotive
Protection Agency. "They're easy to steal and they come out as a complete
module."
"I've seen it done in two minutes;
there's nothing to getting an airbag out," said Edyta Zdancewicz, media and
public
relations specialist for the Canadian Automobile Association. "Just loosen
a couple of screws under the steering wheel
and the whole thing pops out." Making matters worse, she said, is that
most victims have no idea their airbag is gone.
"You don't see it; you don't think about it. The only way you'd ever know
it was gone was if you had your vehicle inspected."
"It" is the airbag and the mechanism
responsible for inflating it. Smaller than a brick of butter, the unit consists
of an inflatable
nylon bag, an accelerometer — a device that senses the force of a very sudden
stop, as in a collision — and a chemically
explosive charge that inflates the bag when the accelerometer indicates it's
necessary.
Invented in 1952 and patented
a year later, airbags were originally marketed as an alternative to seatbelts.
Airbags were introduced by General Motors in 1973 as the Air Cushion Restraint
System, and 10,000 cars with
airbags were sold in the 1970s.
A few years later, as seatbelt
use became mandatory in many jurisdictions, airbags were marketed, mainly
in luxury cars,
as a safety supplement.
This second generation of airbags
was also safer, with less explosive power and small holes in the bag to make
them less
stiff on impact. They proved so effective in tests that they were made mandatory
in the United States in 1996
and in Canada a year later.
They are effective and mandatory, but they are not rechargeable.
That means every car that has had its airbag activated or malfunction — or stolen— needs a new one.
And since the factory replacement cost for the unit hovers at about $2,000, the market is there.
Police say that unscrupulous
mechanics will buy a used or stolen air bag for $300 or less, then bill a
customer
$2,000 for a new one, pocketing the difference.
This can be dangerous to more
than your pocketbook, considering the circumstances, there's no guarantee
the airbag
wasn't damaged when it was taken from the car it was stolen from, there's
a good chance it may not deploy when you really need it.
And a quick look on eBay.ca will
usually reveal hundreds — sometimes thousands — of airbags, with prices ranging
between
$100 and $300. Of course, police are quick to point out that the proliferation
of airbag offers on eBay doesn't indicate stolen goods
— just that there's a thriving market.
The only North American jurisdiction
with specific anti-airbag theft laws so far is New York State. All airbag
deployments there
must be listed on both police and insurance accident reports, and all replacement
airbag serial numbers must be listed
on repair invoices.
The best way to help prevent
airbag theft is to use common sense. The best and only thing you can do is
park your car in a well-lit,
easily observed areas.
