Friday Five: Do You Have A Counterfeit Airbag? (VIDEO)

If you’ve had the airbags in your car replaced anyplace other than a dealership within the last three years, better scoot on over to NHTSA’s website and give it a read. A few counterfeit airbags have made their way into the supply of real ones being sold to repair crash-damaged cars. This video shows the fairly dramatic difference in performance of these bogus bags. The first example barely inflates, while the second one… well, see for yourself.

Dash cams started popping up all over the world mostly to prevent scammers from claiming injuries in staged accidents. But some people speculate they’ve resulted in the unintended side effect of decreasing tourism. Russia in particular seems like a much more dangerous place to visit since “Russian dash cam” became a film genre like comedy and adventure. Here’s one that’ll make you think twice before booking that driving tour of the motherland.

Formula 1 fans who have enjoyed watching practice, qualifying, and the races on SPEED will have to look elsewhere at the end of this season. Fox, which owns SPEED, is turning it into an all-sports network, and F1 doesn’t appear to be included under the umbrella of “sports.” There’s talk that NBC might take over coverage of the world’s most popular motorsport, which most fans think will be okay as long as the peacock network doesn’t do to racing what it did to the Olympics.

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Researchers at Keio University in Japan have come up with a Toyota Prius whose back seat becomes “invisible” to make parking and reversing easier. The system uses a rear-mounted camera to project streaming images of what’s behind the car onto the backseat passenger area, where the upholstery is made with retroreflective beads that act like a movie screen to display the images.

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Mini Netherlands recently promoted test drives in its cars by offering a free cup of coffee with each one. The trick, however, was that you got the coffee after the test drive, and the type of beverage you received was determined by a sensor in the car that categorized your driving style and brewed up the appropriate type of coffee drink. What would have been really interesting is to let drivers re-test the car after downing their dose of caffeine. 

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