What is ridiculous about it? Almost all new cars have them, and I'm sure even economy cars will have them within a few years.

They prevent your femur from breaking on the steering column or dash by keeping the legs in a good position away from harm.

I'm also curious what you mean. Having never "put my knees through the dashboard" I don't understand what you're saying. Watching a few NHTSA crash videos, it seems like a good idea. Please elaborate.

Anything with 3.5 stars or better is good enough for me.
I have never been in a serious accident and I don't plan to.

It would not be an "accident" if you plan on it. That being said I would rather be in a car full of airbags and have good crash protection if and when an accident does happen. Small size will be at a disadvantage to some degree. Search for the Fit versus accord crash test or Camry vs Yaris on youtube if you want to see why.

always keep safe distance, look before you turn, and drive yellow cars.

Good luck "looking" out the back and rear quarters of that super high-ass Veloster CUV. Only high-volume car with crappier sight lines: the Camaro.

Several years back I was riding shotgun when my GF at the time rear-ended an elderly couple at ~50 mph vs. ~20 mph. I slid forward a bit in the seat and my knees hit the dash, hard. I left a pair of fist-sized holes in the plastic. I had a purple bruise on each knee and a few scratches and that was it. There were no broken bones, hell I didn't even take an aspirin.

So the idea of adding extra airbags just to prevent that from happening is, to me, laughable. Even more so considering that when I drive my car, my knees are already less than half an inch from the dash and the steering column is between my knees. There is no way an airbag could protect my knees in my car, and there is nothing down there that they need to be protected from. It's just molded plastic with several inches of air behind it. To think that people need to be coddled to such an extent simply boggles my mind.

And as for breaking femurs, if I was in an accident where my legs were subjected to enough force to break a femur I would count myself very lucky to come out of it with just a broken leg. Femurs are tough SOBs, and any crash serious enough to break one could easily be fatal.

Thanks. Usually that type of collisions are less lethal, aren't they? Especially, if I am cutting them off in my blind spot? :p

Yeah, despite all the "light weight" marketing, this thing really is built kind of like a tank - as are all Subarus. Especially the roof.....

Apart from just how small and light it is, and the fact that physics cannot be defeated and it's not going to fare as well as an F-150 in a crash with a normal sized car, this is gonna be a well engineered piece.

That seems rather short sighted. Not everyone is half an inch from the dash and there are more than just the femur in a leg. I've hurt my knees bad enough from falls rock climbing that I couldn't walk, so, knee airbag sound reasonable to me.

To think yourself impervious to accidents is pretty silly. You know, that there are other people on the road, who despite your driving ability, can and will hit your car?

Yeah, femurs are tough as hell...if you break a femur there's gonna be multiple other places that get broken.

Right before we deployed, we were doing PT on one of the tank roads in Germany. before 8am, civilians aren't allowed on them. We were jogging and a car going about 40km/h came over a crest and hit one of our guys, took his legs out and send him flying about 20 feet.

He broke his wrist and bruised the hell out of his thigh. No broken femur. The driver of the car was definitely more frightened too. Running over a Ranger in your car and seeing him sail 20 feet through the air, only to immediately get back up and pull you out of the vehicle, bleeding all over you from a gashed elbow, is apparently pretty traumatic. We had to pull him off...hahaha.

I disagree. My knees being close to the dash is hardly the crux of my argument. I am saying that there is nothing down there that is particularly likely to cause more than a few cuts and bruises. There is a massive difference between hitting your knees on solid stone and hitting them on ~1/8th" of plastic.

I was not the one who brought up femurs. I was simply responding to bambbrose's implication that hitting the dashboard or steering column could cause a femur to fracture.

No one can touch me. I am invincible.

I'm pretty sure that "knee" airbags are more intended for your shins than anything else. There are quite a few broken shins in car accidents, and in all the cars I've owned, when I was in the correct seaing position, my shins were the part of me that would contact the underside of the dash if I extended my legs.