At Volvo the dealer does not do the disconnection, it is done by a factory rep after all the proper paperwork is filled out and approved by the government. This is due to liability concerns, and is done to protect the dealer in the event of a lawsuit.
I’m 4’11", and I don’t have to have any alternations made in a car when I buy one. I had a coworker who was 3’10", and he had to have alterations made when he bought a car. He had an arrangement with a repair shop who knew just how to fix the car so that he could drive it easily. The shortest poster on the SDMB (or at least the shortest regular poster) is whiterabbit. She’s 4’2". Perhaps she could answer your question about how she gets her car altered when she buys one.
Incidentally, you are not “freakishly small” if you’re at the 5th percentile for height for adult females. Would you call someone who is at the 5th percentile for intelligence freakishly stupid? Would you call someone who is at the 95th percentile for intelligence freakishly smart? Would you call someone who is at the 5th percentile for weight freakishly thin? Would you call someone who is at the 95th percentile for weight freakishly fat? Would you call someone who is at the 95th percentile for height freakishly tall? Then don’t call yourself freakishly short.
Well, yes to all those things, probably.
freakish =/= bad
You would fuck up several hundred to about a grand worth of airbag, and if you fucked it up enough you might set it off in your face.
You would also probably render the car unsaleable until it was restored to usable condition. (I wouldn’t buy a car with a big assed hole in the airbag and I am guessing neither would most other people.)
Hi I’m back to answer your questions.
Just for a bit of background I worked for the Volvo factory for 15 years and am now the service manager of a Volvo dealer. (BTW if you decide to buy a new Volvo, I might be able to save you a few bucks.)
Anyway all of the current Volvos EXCEPT the S60 have 3 stage bags and pyrotechnic steering columns. The S60 will have these features for 2011.
You can break Volvos into two sized cars and four body basic body styles.
The small cars are the S40, V50, C30, and the C70. These are the smallest Volvos but due to some serious engineering they carry the same crash ratings as our large cars. This is due to a mixture of 4 different strength steels in the front structure which controls deformation and what happens in an accident. Volvo calls this VIVA (Volvo Intelligent Vehicle Architecture)
S = sedan
V = Versatility ([del]Vagon[/del] wagon)
C = Coupe or Convertible.
The larger cars are the S80, V70, XC60, XC70, and the XC90
S and V are as above
XC = Cross Country (AWD SUV / SUVish)
The S80 is the biggest of the three sedans Volvo sells. Listed as a full sized now, but back in the day would have been called a midsized.
V70 Large station wagon.
XC 70 Cross over SUV based on the V70. Different bumpers, taller tires and AWD.
XC60 New crossover based SUV. Similar to a Nissan Murano etc.
XC90 SUV
All of the above cars have multistage inflation airbags, pyrotechnic steering columns, and multistage seat belt pre-tensioners. All of these cars depower the front airbags, collapse the steering column easier, and reel in the belt differently if they detect the seat is within the first 4" of the seat travel.
In addition to these features they all also offer pyrotechnic seat belt tensioners in the rear seat also, side curtain airbags to protect your head in a side impact/rollover, and side airbags mounted in the seat to protect your chest in the event of a hit from the side.
I will be happy to answer any further questions you have, if you want you can e mail them directly to me (email is in my profile)
Thanks for the help, Rick! A volvo sounds great!
As for the other discussion, uh… I was being flippant about my height because it just doesn’t bother me to be this short. I’m pretty sure I’m significantly below the 5th percentile but the only charts I could find were kind of hard to read, so I said “at or below.” And I can drive cars without mechanical alteration (nothing’s been done to my Taurus), so I don’t know where you got the idea that I felt I couldn’t. But when I have to replace the Taurus I’d rather do it with a car where the designers have maybe considered that someone my size would be driving it, for the purposes of safety in the event of a crash.
You’re safer in a car with an airbag no matter what. Even if an airbag may hurt you in an accident (and I haven’t seen any evidence that this is true), it will save your life.
Really Not All That Bright writes:
> Well, yes to all those things, probably.
So then the next time you’re in a room with 20 people, you should conclude that one of them is freakishly stupid, one is freakishly smart, one is freakishly tall, one is freakishly short, one is freakishly fat, one is freakishly thin, and so on for any other factor that you can quantify for any human being.
No, 20 people is not a representative sample.
Something just to keep in mind, A friend of mine, whom is um… vertically challenged, could at time barely see over the steering wheel of her old Durango. So once it died, she went car shopping, and at last settled on a Toyota Prius. Surprisingly, the seat belts didn’t go over her throat like the Durango did.
Miss Violaceous, out of curiousity, what is your height? 
Sigmagirl writes:
> No, 20 people is not a representative sample.
That’s essentially irrelevant. If you decide that for any given attribute that the lowest 5% of people with that attribute should be referred to as “freakishly low in attribute X” and the highest 5% of people with that attribute should be referred to as “freakishly high in attribute X” (i.e., if you decide that the shortest 5% of people should be referred to as “freakishly short” and the tallest 5% should be referred to as “freakishly tall”), then at least half of the time any random sample of 20 people will have one person will have at least one person that you will refer to as “freakishly low in attribute X” (i.e., “freakishly short”) and at least half of the time any random sample of 20 people will have at least one person that you will refer to as “freakishly high in attribute X” (i.e. “freakishly short”).
this is not even close to true, airbags are only a safety device when you hit them in a crash. If they hit you you can toss safety right out the window, possibly with your head…its a 200mph explosion driving those bags out. Small women and children have been decapitated by airbags.
you need about 12" between you and the steering wheel to be safe.
What is your height? According to these data (pdf), height for adult females is normally distributed w/ mean 64.1 inches and standard deviation 2.75. So the 5th percentile would be ~59.5 inches or 4’11.5"
That’s not irrelevant at all.
Defining somebody as “freakish” or extreme/unusual in any way against the general population is not unreasonable. Defining a person as unusual simply because they don’t match the other people in a room is silly.
Note that if anyone was offended by my use of the term “freakish” I’d stop. It certainly wouldn’t be my adjective of choice- it just happened to be what the OP called herself.
Critical1 writes:
> this is not even close to true, airbags are only a safety device when you hit
> them in a crash. If they hit you you can toss safety right out the window,
> possibly with your head…its a 200mph explosion driving those bags out. Small
> women and children have been decapitated by airbags.
>
>
> you need about 12" between you and the steering wheel to be safe.
Cite? And it’s not sufficient to give an example of someone who was killed by an airbag. Lots of people have been killed in auto accidents. A small number of people have been killed by airbags. Show me statistics that demonstrate that, for a person of a given height or less, the probability that they will be killed in an auto accident will be greater if they have the airbag activated than if they have the airbag deactivated.