And you may notice that some cars have lots of stickers all over to warn
you about the airbag being present. This is more for US consumers who
must be warned enough otherwise if they get hit by the airbag, they will
sue for not 'being aware'! There was one point after the bad publicity
about how airbags seemed to be killing kids that carmakers put in lots of
stickers to warn people so they had no excuse to claim ignorance.
But it can happen that an owner will not know an airbag is present if he
is not someone who knows much about cars and the salesman does not
explain to him. I met one such person in the mid 1990s. He was a Jeep
Cherokee owner and he had one of the units which had been retro-fitted
with an airbag by MBf Automobiles. But salesman never told him at all and
he did not know about it.
One day, he crashed into a lorry head-on. At the moment of impact, he saw
a 'white cloth' coming out of the steering wheel and he honestly believed
that a ghost had come to claim him!!!

He said that if he had a weak
heart, maybe die of shock if the accident didn't kill him. But the airbag
did save him and he believed in its benefits. In fact, he was the first
Jeep owner in Malaysia to experience the airbag and MBF called a press
conference to let him tell his story.