Bullethead

I was just thinking the other day that it's been a while since the Reaper took a swipe at me and that he was about due. Sure enough, he gave it a good try a little while ago, but once again missed me clean. You just can't kill a man who's born to hang . I was riding home with a friend about 2300 our time, having gone to the big city to see a movie. We were nearly home, on the 4-lane divided section of the Blues Highway, when we spotted a police car coming the other way with his lights on. He wasn't chasing anybody so we figured he was heading for the usual Friday night bar fight in our little town. As it turned out, though, he was trying to warn us of some damn fool going the wrong way in our set of lanes. Problem was, this was just as we were entering a big curve to the right up against a steep hillside, so we couldn't see the on-coming SUV until it was right on top of us. We were in the right lane side-by-side with a pick-up in the left lane that was gradually passing us. Fortunately for us, the wrong-way idiot was also in the left lane. My buddy immediately headed for the right shoulder and continued on into the ditch while the pick-up slammed his brakes and tried to get into our lane. Unfortunately, there was neither time nor space to pull it off, and the wrong-way SUV made no attempt to dodge. Thus, the SUV and pick-up hit head-on right beside us. By the time of impact, the pick-up had slowed down enough so his front bumper was about even with the middle of our car. Thus, when he spun into our lane after the off-set collision, he came in just an RCH behind us. We stopped about 30 yards on in the ditch, completely untouched. The pick-up had 2 guys in it. The passenger was bunged up but managed to get himself out. The driver, however, was in pretty bad shape and had to be cut out with the Jaws of Life. The wrong-way idiot was a blonde chick (don't it figure?). She was knocked out cold but came to fairly soon and was relatively unhurt except the engine block was knocked back onto her foot. Lucky she didn't have anything life-threatening because it took the firemen a good while to pry her loose. Me and my buddy helped a little, mostly in getting stuff off the firetrucks because we knew were it all was stowed. All in all, it's amazing how well airbags protect people. When I was a fireman, before those were so common, 1 or 2 of them would have been dead for sure. I've complained about my buddy's driving in the past. He has a tendency to tailgate people and can't hold a constant speed. However, he's got good reactions when the chips are down, and I guess that's what counts . The funny thing is, it being Friday night, we had decided to forego our usual "one for the road" after the movie before starting for home; we didn't want to fight the crowds at the bars. So OT1H, we were stone sober when we had to give statements to the cops. But OTOH, if we HAD stopped for a drink, we wouldn't have been at that place and time to nearly get killed. So it just goes to show, once again, that in this life you're just screwed no matter what you do :rapage: . But I'm for damn sure having a drink right now! :drinks_drunk:

Yeah, that would have put him in traction for months if it had rolled up his leg. Might have even killed him if it had slammed his head into the pavement. One time when I was driving 18-wheelers, I was heading east on I-40 towards Gallup, NM early in the morning. A faster truck was passing me, and as we come up a slight rise with the sun in our eyes, we saw a bunch of tire fragments ("gators") too late to avoid them. I saw all sorts of sparks under the other truck's trailer, plus hunks of rubber flying all over. As he switched into my lane after passing me, I saw something sticking out the right side of his trailer, but I couldn't tell what it was. I told him about it on the CB so he pulled over to take care of it. I kept going, but his radio still reached me after he found out what it was. Turned out, it was a split ring from one of those old, 2-piece 18-wheeler wheel hub, hung up on the flat tire rack under his trailer. The gap between the ends of the ring is only a couple of inches, which is the same as the width of the channel iron used in the flat tire rack. IOW, the ring had made a perfect horseshoes ringer on the post of the rack. Had it not done so, it would have bounced left or right. If it had bounced right, it would have cut like a knife through the aluminum of my driver's side door at about ankle level--so much for me. Had it bounced right, it would have cut the air brake lines of his trailer, so those wheels would have locked up and fish-tailed at 80mph right next to me--so much for both of us. You know, I need another drink just thinking about that... BRB

Excellent idea. As Ben Franklin said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Beer is my favorite thing in the world. After that, and a noticeable distance behind, it's a toss-up for 2nd place between whiskey, whisky, sex, violence, adrenaline, and a combination of them all . My favorite beers are those I make myself. I make old-school 1700s porters and India pale ales. Both are about 8% alcohol, highly hopped and, as a result of these natural preservatives, are fully capable of surviving unscathed when unrefrigerated for months in the climate around here. I brew these in expectation of long-term power outages after hurricanes, just in case, and I have yet to be disappointed when such disasters have befallen us . These are the beers that the Royal Navy used to have in open barrels on the decks of ships in the Caribbean just south of here, for the men on watch to scoop up mugs to remain hydrated (1 gallon per man per day) while doing pulley-hauley in 90^F and 90% humidity. However, when my electricity works, I serve mine on tap in a modified fridge with spigots drilled through the side. Inside are 3x 2.5gal kegs, a CO2 bottle, and no shelves. Porter and IPA are always available, but the 3rd tap is the wildcard. Sometimes it's a mild, sometimes a Scotch ale, sometimes a stout, sometimes something from the Continent. But currently, it's serving a diabolical, deceptively sweet yet DEADLY pulque I made from agave nectar I got, ironically, at a health food store . If I have to drink store-bought beers, I like EVERYTHING made by Samuel Smith, plus things like Old Speckled Hen, Bishop's Finger (even if I know where it's been), Chimay Grande Reserve, Samiklaus, Old Rasputin, Thomas Hardy Ale, Old Foghorn, Rogue's Dead Guy Ale, and EKU 28 Kulminator (the only beer that needs a beer chaser ). You get the idea. Glorious, glug-glug-glug-glorious One keg of beer for the four of us! Glory be to God that there are no more of us For the four of us can drink it all alone! [/i]

A fair amount. It's a great plane, no question. In fact, I voted for it as a favorite "bomber", even though I only fly it in fighter squadrons, because it wasn't listed a fighter for some strange reason. All Fee fighter squadrons eventually become Brisfit fighter squadrons, so if I live long enough that's my reward. But that usually happens in the fall of 1917, and the summer getting there is so boring after Bloody April (and May) that I often don't have the patience to wait for it and just start over again. And when you do get the Brisfit, it's so friggin' good against most contemporary opposition that I don't find it that much fun compared to the out-classed Fee :). My other "bomber" pick was the Camel, for the same reaons. All Pup squadrons become Camel squadrons, so I've flown it a fair amount, too. But when I get it, I find the experience less enjoyable than being stuck with the Pup in Bloody April, and there's the same lack of activity in between. I don't fly OFF to massacre the AI and beat MvR's score. I fly OFF to be in hopeless situations but somehow survive anyway, whether I kill anybody or not. If I can start a pilot in an out-classed machine around the beginning of Bloody April and have him make it to the end of May, without spending so much time in the hospital that he basically slept through it, then I consider myself to have beaten the game :yes: . Then it's time to do it again. I know, I'm a weirdo into self-flagellation, but it makes me happy . I suppose one of these days I'll try a Pfalz squadron in 1918, once I get tired of Bloody April.

What if the only thing you enjoy about your family is when they give you a few minutes' peace? But back to Homeboy's lament about scrambles. I flew 1 of them, long ago, and never again. A scramble, realistically, is taking off to chase something your early warning net has picked up a long way away from where you live. That's what I thought this was. But Noooooooooooo...... It was an MMOFS-style vulchathon. And Homeboy and I both know how those things go... In real life, nobody with more than 1/2 a brain took off with enemies right on top of his base, and only a very few people with only 1/2 a brain were savvy enough otherwise to get onto flight duty in the 1st place. Hence, while vulches did happen in real life, they were somewhat few and far between. Most folks had the sense to watch the show from a trench until the enemy turned for home before they thought about taking off. So, unless you're one of those dweebs I used to kill 6-8 times in as many circuits of your field in AW, WB, or AH, you've got no business accepting scramble missions. And if you are that type, consider this. I've read several reports here of folks who've kicked butt on scramble missions in OFF. I submit, however, that the OFF AI goes wonky when that close to the ground, so it doesn't floss its teeth with your entrails the way any human with enough stick time to pull the trigger would, and as you deserve for giving it the chance. So, while accepting a "scramble" mission in OFF isn't as stupid as doing the same thing against humans (real life or MP), it's still historically unrealistic AND exploiting an AI weakness. How proud does that make you feel? Bottom line: I agree with Homebody's 2nd point: never do scramble missions.

That all may be, but I don't want to be put in the position of having to repay your hospitality by escaping. And, assuming you all really are a bunch of affable drinkers that I might come to like, I wouldn't want to put you all in the situation of having to explain how I got away. Duty and honor and all that crap, eh what? Damn the war! But if was peacetime, I wouldn't have a job. Oh well

The planes I fly most, Fees and Pups, are usually slower than the enemy's (mostly Alb D.IIIs), so there's often no escape for me by diving or just out-running them. On the plus side, however, my rides are generally able to turn better. Thus, my tactics will probably work in any similar match-up. This all assumes there's only 1 of me and several enemies, and that this situation begins at medium or high altitude. First, I try to sting as many of the badguys as possible, hoping they'll take the better part of valor and go away. To do this, I totally sell my speed for angles. I'm talking flying at 40-60 knots, ruddering around like mad. This helps me dodge bullets and I often find myself behind badguys at fairly long range. I take potshots at them and often get a few hits. Periodically, this causes a badguy to leave me alone. As this is happening, I'm losing altitude fast, and the enemy are losing speed fast. This makes it easier for me because they can't make as many passes at me, and they're easier to dodge, plus I can get behind them easier at shorter ranges. Eventually, I get down amongst the weeds. Hedgehopping per se really isn't a good move because I'm not fast enough to get away. So I just continue what I've been doing, although of course not so aggressively because I can't lose any more altitude. However, the proximity of the ground tends to make the enemy much less aggressive, so they tend to draw off a lot and circling around working up courage to rush me again. This gives me a chance to work in the direction I want to go. Sometimes they all fly away, but usually 1 or 2 will keep hanging around making occasional passes at me, which I keep trying to dodge and riposte. If I'm over friendly territory, which fortunately is rather often, I try to work into the vicinity of ground installations and their flak. If I'm over enemy territory, I try hard to avoid such places. This is something you have think about early in the fight, while you're still coming down from above. As I flop around up there, I attempt to work the fight over terrain favorable for me, because I expect to be down at treetop level eventually. That's pretty much it. The last resort is just land and end the flight, but of course that requires being over friendly territory. Still, you'll get a chance to do it at some point when the enemies are taking one of their periodic breaks from harrying you. So while you're playing dodgeball, if you're considering this option (which is often, because by now you're all shot up), you also need to work the fight over a place fit to land on. If I'm over enemy territory, I fight to the death. The Huns will NEVER take me alive!!!

One of my favorite scouts wasn't listed: the mighty Fee! I never fly that as a bomber, mostly because you can't strafe with it :).

Don't feel bad--a great many websites went down early this week and late last week, even Wikipedia. I put it down to the unannounced change Microsoft put out late last week that impacted a lot of things.

I agree. And it might not just be a function of the threshold values that PW mentioned. I think bulletholes are decals applied to the underlying model skin, and it could be that some of them are set too low relative to the skin, so are inside the model instead of just above the outer surface.

How did you manage the touchdown? I've tried to ditch several times but it's always ended badly. Every time my wheels touch, they dig in and stop, throwing me nose first into an instantly fatal crash. This despite trying to as slow as possible and put the tailskid in the water first. I've read that most WW1 landplanes that operated a lot over water could jettison their landing gear so this woulnd't happen. Seems to have been a good idea, given my experiences

I think every airplane has a compass--it was IIRC the 1st universal flight instrument. In most planes, you can see it without TIR, by using the keypad views and sometimes by zooming out your view. In a few, it's in a strange place (like out on 1 wing in the DFW), but in at least most of those, you can see it using F6 repeatedly, which cycles through various view positions. Like in the DFW, IIRC you can't read the compass worth a damn with TIR, but one of the F6 positions takes you right to it.

IIRC, there's not a whole helluvalot going on right at the coast at that point in time. Not only is the weather generally crappy, which limits how many planes are in the air, but there are only a few RNAS squadrons in the area, and most of them are 2-seaters. AI 2-seaters with the benefits of TAC and external target view (which IMHO is the bare minium that the AI uses) will almost certain run away from a flight of scouts. Because you're not using TAC, you never know they're there, because they run away long before they come within "visual" range without TAC. Just my POV, so don't take offense, but I find NOT using TAC to be very unrealistic. I have somewhere between 20/10 and 20/15 vision beyond arm's length, depending on how much I've slept, how hung-over I am, and how much coffee I've had when I take the eye test. I can usally read the bottom line of the chart at 20 feet, but if I've only slept 2 hours and am really hung-over, I can only read the 2nd-to-the-bottom line. It's my understanding that this was the usual long-range vision acuity of any flyboy who lived long enough to write memoirs. Even though I'm a middle-aged old fart who needs reading glasses sometimes to see this forum from a range of 2 feet (especially when it's way late at night and I'm drunk), I can read it with ease without glasses from there out to about 6 feet, at 1680x1050. I can see Piper Cubs (about the size of most WW1 aircract) quite easily well beyond the 4-8 mile range that TAC shows dots (depending on who you believe on that), and even that is WAY further than even the 1-pixel dots for distant aircraft appear in OFF. So as I see it, not using TAC is the same as playing a totally myopic pilot who would never have been cleared by the MOs for flight duty . Don't misunderstand me . When I said the AI uses TAC and external views, I wasn't implying that was a bad thing. I use them myself, because I KNOW I can spot airplanes much further away than they become 1 pixel wide in any game. The whole reason such aids (not cheats) exist is to give you the visual accuity of a typical successful pilot, which cannot be duplicated on computer screens. Not using them is therefore unrealistic, unless you desire to play a myopic pilot who shouldn't be flying in the 1st place .

Thanks for the explanation. It's always nice to have the arcana imperiorum revealed Again, thanks.

That's what I meant to say. I'm all 5s except for terrain which is a 4, and I use the 2nd best skins. Even so, I hardly ever see bulletholes. Many times, I know I've taken like 50-60 hits all over my plane, and have gone into external view to take a screenshot. From reading the walls of red text going by, I even know where to look for them. But I usually see nothing. Occasionally, I'll see 1 or 2. OTOH, I do see when something breaks off. This appears to be a function of the plane you're in. For instance, I see bulletholes all over Albatri, both mine and the enemy's. But on the Fee, the only place they ever appear is on the horizontal tail, and I've never seen them anywhere on a Pup.

Warping practically guarantees you'll be lower than the enemy. See the thread on Warping and the Enemy.

Interesting. I always spot the enemy 8 miles away on TAC, or so I think. I could be wrong, but it sure seems like 8 miles to me, looking at the range labels. It's just that the TAC is 2D and the 8 mile radius is spherical. Thus, you only see enemies near the edge of the TAC if you're co-alt with them, but that does happen. The closer in towards the center they are when they 1st appear, the greater the difference in altitude between you, but it won't tell you who is higher. As to how they act, I suspect that the AI makes decisions based on the situation. I'm sure it considers the numerical odds, the altitude difference, and the relative performance of the planes at least. In most of my careers, all 3 of these are usually much in favor of the AI, which probably puts it into attack mode from the get-go. Maybe if the odds were different, the AI would be more cautious?

I use the 2nd highest airplane setting, but I hardly ever see even bulletholes. And this despite usually being liberally peppered.

I don't think so. It's pretty obvious that the AI flies like it not only uses TAC, but also the external target view to identify you. I say this because I use both, and whenever I spot unidentified dots at max TAC range and they turn out to be enemy, they're usually already diving towards me. So, whether you use these tools or not yourself, you're not going to miss many fights because the AI usually will come to you regardless. Where warping DOES impact you as concerns enemies is in altitude. When you warp, you do NOT climb at your best rate. It looks like instead, the game divides your flight altitude at the objective by the number of miles of your path to get there, and has you climb at a rate to get you to the assigned altitude when you arrive there. It's really more like going up stairs than a constant climb, though. At each outbound waypoint, you usually teleport up several thousand feet, then warp along practically on the same level, climbing very slowly. Usually, you'll still be thousands of feet below your assigned altitude right up to the objective waypoint, then once you get there you'll suddenly be at the final height. Either way you slice it, this almost always puts you at a lower altitude than you would have had if you hadn't warped. By a considerable amount. So if you're in a place and time where meeting the enemy on your side of the lines is common, you're certain to be bounced from above. The worst part about this, however, that the warping way of gaining height is set in stone, and takes no account of your actual altitude when you start warping. Suppose you come out of a warp well short of your objective, and naturally at a low altitude, due to high enemies deep in your territory, and for some reason they don't immediately attack. So you spend a lot of realtime staying away from them while climbing as best you can. Say you even reach your patrol altitude or higher, but by the time this happens, the enemy has gone away and you can warp again. If you enter warp at this point, it will slam you back down to where you were when this all started, wasting all that altitude you so laboriously gained. Thus, when you meet the same enemies again slightly further along, it's a repeat of the initial situation, you low and them high. For this reason, NEVER warp in the SPAD on ingress, and think twice before warping on egress. That plane HAS to start with the fight an altitude advantage or it's toast. But you will ALWAYS be lower than the enemy if you warp, at least on ingress.

I've read otherwise. As I understand it, the Germans were outnumbered in general, but usually had local numerical superiority for 2 reasons: They were on the defensive relying on an extensive early warning system, so could vector large numbers to the critical point. They typically flew the whole Jasta in 1 wad whereas the Brits were sending out lone flights. So when flying as the Brits in Bloody April, I fully expect to be outnumbered in the fights I have, because that's what I understand is historically correct for that time and place. And that's why I fly there so much

That was my experience as a Pup pilot. I mostly alternate between Pups and Fees, all in Bloody April. But even if I had talked about my Fee experience, the only difference in my answer would have been to leave out the part about fighting at 15000 feet. Fees can't come close to that altitude . But my Pup rarely gets that high because of the frequency of being bounced on my side of the mud while still climbing. Basically, if you're a Brit in Bloody April, you can pretty much depend on being bounced from high above by about twice your numbers on nearly every mission, regardless of what you're flying. And BTW, I have the highest flight density, air activity, and altitudes set.

I do almost all my flying for the RFC in Bloody April 1917, in the Arras area. The following May isn't noticeably easier, but if I can live into June (so far only due to being hospitalized for much of the bad times), things get much easier. At that point, I usually invalid my pilot home in a straitjacket and start over. In Bloody April, I am almost always outnumbered, which I think is historically accurate. IIRC, the Brits were sending out individual flights most of the time while the Germans were roaming around in full Jastas. Anyway, that's the type of fight I usually get into. Sometimes, both flights in my squadron do the same thing, but are usually several miles apart when the fun starts. As such, the Huns still have a significant numerical advantage for the initial clash, and when they pick on my B Flight, A Flight doesn't always come to help. But when they go for A Flight first, I go join the party to bounce THEM for a change. However, sometimes 2 different Jastas bounce both our flights simultaneously. Due to attrition and at least 2 guys always being on leave, after the 1st couple of missions I only have 2 wingmen instead of 3, and occasionally only 1 buddy. Sometimes we tangle with the same Germans repeatedly in a short period of time, and they get attritted, too. They appear to start out mostly in gangs of at least 8, but if we've been hitting them hard they might be down to only 5 planes once in a while. However, 7-8 Germans is the usual opposition, although 10-12 isn't uncommon. Although I see many friendly 2-seaters, I've only met friendly scouts from other squadrons a couple of times. Once they passed close by in a non-combat situation, and once they were fighting on the deck when we got there. IOW, my flight has never received reinforcements from that source. The Germans, however, sometimes get reinforcements, or I'll meet another gang of them as I limp home after the 1st fight. Most times, I'm bounced from high above. This happens surprisingly often on the Brit side of the lines as we're still climbing toward the front. Thus, many of my fights happen at fairly low altitude, which is annoying because the Pup does better against the Albatros up high. On the plus side, however, it doesn't take long to get down into friendly AAMG range, which is a big help when we're as outnumbered as we usually are . If we can avoid this, however, we can reach 15-16000 feet over the Lines. We're usually still hit from above, but not by as much, and the relative performance isn't so much in the Germans' favor. Still, the majority of my fights happen on our side or directly over the trenches. It's quite rare to penetrate far into Hunland without getting into a fight, after which it's usually necessary to go home instead of pressing on.

But it's true. Moral relativism leads directly to Dachau and its equivalents. There most definitely are absolute good and evil things, and those who think otherwise are not only fools, but are the primary reason why evil gets whatever footholds it can amongst a great majority of people who are fundamentally opposed to such things. The good people who still possess an innate sense of right and wrong are afraid to speak out against patent evils because they don't want to be branded as intolerant by the moral relativists and sued out of house and home. Thus, evils that could easily be crushed at their beginnings are allowed to grow and spread, until they take over the reins of the state and thereafter can dictate their tune. And all such tunes involve a Dachau for somebody, based on race, creed, color, sex, political views, or whatever. When that happens, there's nothing for it but for those remaining to undergo a Verdun. This leads to massive wars that kill even more people than the Dachaus of the evil regime. Such massive bodycounts are the ONLY fruit of moral relativism. And it could all be avoided before it started by just not being afraid to say "that's WRONG" to the jerks who start the whole process. So in actuality, the REAL choice is between being able to denounce evil without fear of repercussions from a morally relativistic, holier-than-thou group of PERCEIVED social superiors, and just going with your God-given sense of right and wrong. Failing to do the latter leads inevitably to a choice between Dachau and Verdun, to the great harm of all. So to me, the best way to prevent both horrible evils from working their will, AND THEN having to fight horrible wars to stop them, is to immediately slap the bejeezus out of all those who claim there are no absolute goods and evils. Without their BS blinding otherwise good people to the blindingly obvious, we wouldn't have the problems we do. "You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything". That's pretty much the ONLY lesson to be learned from history, as a practical matter, for all of us who don't lead armies or run nations. That I have no problem with. But the problem is, every swinging Richard who musters to the Pìobaireachd, hears the bugles, follows the drums, obeys his draft notice, or whatever, is equally brave. An' now the hugly bullets come peckin' through the dust, An' no one wants to face 'em, but every beggar must; So like a man in irons, which isn't glad to go, They moves 'em off by companies uncommon stiff an' slow. (Kipling, "The 'Eathen")

I think, surely, that the same can be said of most humans :yes: . After all, most of us have jobs, families, etc., which limit our opportunities to play at all, and how long we can play on those occasions when we can. I bet a lot of us secretly wish to catch swine flu so we can sit at home, quarantined, with nothing to do but play OFF all day . Anyway, given the situation where you need to get the most out of what little time you have to play, I'm sure many humans accept battle in situations where real WW1 FLs would have taken the long way home. Another contributing factor, I'm sure, is the difficulty in surprising AI planes. IIRC, something like 80% of all guns kills in air-to-air combat came in suprise bounces. I've never surprised anybody yet. OTOH, the AI can see me before I see him, and is usually attacking from a postion of considerable advantage before I know he's there. Given the above, the odds are that you'll see more combat per flying hour in OFF than real pilots had to deal with. Most guys would go perhaps a week without seeing action. We, OTOH, usually have a fight every sortie because we pick squadrons that are where the action is. Plus we do 2 or 3 sorties per day, which is actually historical for times when the front was hot. Now combine the above with OBD's dedication to realistic combat results. Shooting MGs from short range at somebody, or a fuel tank, protected by nothing more substantial than clothing, is going to be deadly, if it's modeled with anything approaching realism. The key to surviving, therefore, is to avoid being shot at. We tend to get shot at more than real pilots. So if you're having fights every sortie, it won't be long before the odds catch up with you and some enemy will land a lucky burst in your vitals. I submit that this chance comes up for us more often than it did for the real guys.

I don't know about the relative strengths of US vs. Euro airbags. I suggest a test. Pull the steering column out of some fairly large Euro car and launch it with the airbag. If it goes up about 4-5m, then I'd say they're about equal strength . Seatbelt use in the US has been compulsory for many years. Enforcement has long been pretty lax, however. In the last few years, however, they've really started cracking down on it, at least in most places. It's hard to watch TV for any length of time these days without seeing a "Click it or ticket" commercial. I think the reason for the sudden step-up in enforcement is the growing number of deaths and injuries from airbags caused by lack of seatbelt use. Airbags have been mandatory equipment on new cars for long enough now that even most old used cars have them these days, so now just about everybody is exposed to them. Even where I live, in a poor rural area where most folks drive old clunkers. It really wasn't until 2005 or so that the majority of wrecks around here involved airbags, but now nearly all of them do. Because airbags are government-mandated equipment, the government doesn't say much about their hazards, under the theory that governments can do no wrong. Kinda like how the structural problems of Airbus planes are hushed up... About the only thing most folks might have heard on the subject is that "Final Destination" movie where a chick gets killed when an airbag goes off while she's being cut out of her wrecked car. I'm sure most folks dismissed that has Hollywood BS. However, it's still a fact that way more people have been killed by airbags than by all the kids who've taken guns to schools. I picked up that tidbit during fireman training. Prior to all the various kinds of airbags making their appearance, firemen naturally got people out of wrecks as fast as possible. Time is important in such situations. But once all these airbags and all the various related features started becoming common, a lot of people started getting hurt in the extrication process. Thus, there was a lot of retraining for firemen, to change them from charging in gung-ho into approaching wrecked cars as if they were going to defuse a live bomb, which is essentially what it's like now. Because firemen are hard-chargers by temperment, it took a lot of demonstrations and talk of gory statistics to change their habits.