Hey guys, my car is safetied and on the road for good now with the next inspection being an emissions test in 2011. I'm just wondering if it's legal to remove the stock airbag steering wheel.. It's just so damn ugly looking.. thanks, KP.

No, but your insurance company may not like it. A good way to have a claim denied. But if you don't have insurance who gives a crap.

You may want to call your DOT or local popo station.
I don't remeber how well I am remebering this which is why I said to call someone.
But if I remeber correctly someone had bought a car or something like that. At anyrate had a factory air bag that had been removed. The state did at least safety inspections. Said he had to have it.
Might have been the steering wheel was to small too.

I believe it's illegal to tamper with any federally mandated safety device on a vehicle. Don't know about airbags. Don't know that they were federally required from 82-92. Doubt it.

I do remember reading in a Truckin' mag or something a letter from a guy who said he got pulled over for speeding or something and the officer gave him a ticket for having removed his airbag and putting a monitor in its place. However I can't recall if it was just because the monitor was facing the driver or because he removed the airbag, or both.

It's illegal in most states to have a monitor facing the driver unless it's GPS.

Mathius

Most states here in the US it IS legal for YOU to remover YOUR airbag voluntarily. It is ILLEGAL for a shop to do it FOR YOU. Not sure about canada though. Just call your DOT and ask them.

Took me like 5 times to read this.... no offense it just didn't make to much sense to me at first...

anyway, you should be able to look up all your state laws and requirements for motorized vehicles on the internet...

from what I understand here in ontario you can remove the air bag as long as YOU own the car, if you sell it then it needs to go back in to pass a safety at a compotent shop, (some shops wouldnt think to look for that) when you go for e test in 2011 they dont inspect your car, they just test emissions so it wont matter. however as said earlier if you get into a accident and insurance checks and see its not there you could be in trouble, also if you let someone else drive the car (a friend, wife etc) and the car is in a accident where the air bag would of deployed and they are hurt you could be liable. hope that helps

I was considering it because I'm selling my other car, and the fitment of the airbag to the steering wheel sucks.. I also DID NOT find a sensor in the front of the car when I had it all apart (it was in an accident 4 years ago) so I doubt it even works... Not only that, but these 18 year old airbags probably lose their strength after all that time..

So it's illegal to mount a touchscreen monitor facing the driver so he can control a computer?

EDIT: Read up on it and at least in California it's legal to mount any monitor facing the driver if it's not blocking his field of vision of the road. Just don't mount it on top of the dash and you're gtg.

In most every state you are not permitted to have any screen that the drive can watch. You can say its just for vehicle control but the police would see it as a hazard and a distraction.

What about the legality of having a touchscreen built into newer cars such as the scion xB?

Why doesn't that surprise me? California's all gun ho about saving the environment, but don't give a crap if some idiot is watching cartoons while he's supposed to be driving.

I swear California is another planet entirely. While the rest of the country is trying to survive and worried about the economy, California is trying to put a ban on dark colored vehicles.

Yeah. I didn't make that up.

Mathius

I'm in ontario, I removed mine, I didn't even try and find out if it was legal or not. My car is going to stay with me, I have no plans on selling it, and I shouldnt have to have any inspections done other than emissions anymore. If you do decide to do it though, be VERY careful when removing it, read up on the procedure you need to do to disable the airbag. You don't want it going off on you when you are removing it.

Sometimes I wish I didn't live here. Some Midwestern state with lots of open roads sounds nice....

Boy, they would hate me .
A friend sent me an article about that cause he knows I'm making my camaro as Black and Dark as possible.
It's something to do with the paint meeting a 20% reflectivity requirement to save the earth or something, boy there are a lot of hippies out there.

I would be more worried about the insurance denying my claim than the police writing me a ticket for it. I know some insurance companies give a certain discount when your vehicle is listed as having an airbag, so if you get in an accident and its not there, they could consider that fraud and deny the claim, or worse. Also, like others have said, if somoene else drives it and gets hurt in a manner in which the airbag could have prevented the injury, you could also be liable. I was told that they weren't federally mandated in vehicles until 1995 (I haven't reserched it myself though). Also I read on here that one member contacted his insurance and asked if he could swap steering wheels from another year thirdgen without an airbag and his insurance just charged him an extra $11 bucks or something a month to insure it as not having an airbag. I'm looking into collector car insurance soon so that the car will have an agreed upon value and I can list all my mods down on paper. It seems these days insurance companies can deny a claim for just about anything.

So how did the race between you and the 4thgen T/A go? lol, i'm curious. Cause i'm sure you beat it anyway, depending on its mods.

So I called my insurance broker today. He told me that they would really only cancel me if the car was heavily modified (Rims, Tires, stereo blah blah). Because the car is pre. 1995 he told me that it wouldn't be a big deal, and if it was ok with the MTO, it wouldn't be a big deal..

But if I get injured in a car accident in the car, they would think twice about giving me money to pay for the missed work.

I believe in all 50 states it is legal to have video anywhere in the car. The thing is that any video besides gps can not be seen by the driver while the vehicle is in motion. Most in dash dvd players have a parking brake switch so that it only plays with the brake on. Some in dash dvd players use a gyro to tell if the vehicle is in motion to stop playback also.

Whos gonna know? If you want to, do it.

Don't get caught.


If you do crash, sneak the airbag wheel back in, and throw lots of baby powder around the airbag vicinity. They'll never suspect a thing.