Just found this gem from an article on airbag fatalities;
Great advice, I’m sure its responsible for so many lives a year 
Well, I wouldn’t think it a common occurance, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to have a pipe in my mouth when an airbag went off. Yeeefrickingouch.
Heck, back when I used to smoke, I was always a bit nervous about leaving a cigarette in my mouth while driving for just that reason.
Actually not bad advise. I teach technicians about airbags systems. I had always wondered about pipe smokers and airbags. At a technical conference once I met up with an airbag design engineer. So I asked him what would happen in an airbag deployment and a pipe smoker.
He laughed. A lot, and finally said it would be bad. :eek:
There are other comments in that article that I believe to be wrong, but the pipe smoking one is correct.
There are very few pipe smokers any more (or so it seems to me) and the chance of one driving a car and having an accident, while smoking said pipe has got to be fairly low.
Heh, now that I think about it, my ex’s father used to drive down with a pipe in tow, I wonder if he smoked it while he drove.
I wonder too about the guy driving a BMW erratically on the motorway while eating (I jest not) corn on the cob :dubious:
I don’t imagine many people drive and smoke pipes at the same time - my boyfriend smokes pipes, and it seems they’re always needing attention - he’s always fooling around with the thing. I guess people probably do smoke them while driving, but it seems like a bad idea to start with.
Is this good information just for tobacco pipes? How about crack pipes? Does the same advise apply? I mean, nothing will kill your buzz faster than being in an accident and having your crack pipe bust the airbag…
Damn, they should put warning stickers on those things…
Wow, you could really get hurt with a glass crack pipe!
See. This issue MUST be addressed. I mean, we don’t need crack additicts getting hurt because the automotive industry didn’t think about them.
How safe are one-hitters?
Depends on how high you are.
Why? Couldn’t the force of the air bag crush the cigarette and put it out simultaneously? Cigarettes are not at all difficult to destroy or put out.
Unless you pop the airbag with a viciously hot ciggie and then your head bashes off the steering wheel and ciggie pops in mouth 
Most ERs see a few “pencil stabbed in the back of the throat” injuries every year. Even walking around with something clenched in your teeth can be hazardous.
As for a cigarette popping an airbag, it wouldn’t make any difference. Airbags are designed to inflate and deflate, all within a second.
It can indeed be nasty; if you look at a cross-section diagram of the human head/throat, there’s not a heck of a lot of material between the back of the throat and the spinal column.
But, but there’s this (bolding mine): “Injuries such as abrasion of the skin, hearing damage (from the sound during deploitation), head injuries, and breaking the nose can occur . . .”
How can we possibly doubt the information in this articulate and well-written article?
What scares me more is
What would happen to one of those women who ride arround in the passanger seat with their feet up on the dash board if the air bag was to deploy.
Oh come on, Bippy! Everyone knows 25 year old pick up trucks and old, beat up Cameros don’t have airbags!
I think I saw a documentary about that once, Bippy. Apparently, what happens is a buff police officer with a way with words and a young, sassy female partner arrive on the scene and use some unusual questioning methods.
Wait…now that I think about it, maybe it wasn’t technically a documentary.