Beware the Airbag Police

The New York Times has an interesting article today on a recent federal crackdown on folks who take the airbags out of their cars. The targets, at this point at least, tend to be high profile "car makeover" TV shows like MTV's Pimp My Ride. Apparently they sometimes replace the OEM steering wheel (with airbag) with an aftermarket piece that has a TV/LCD screen (WTF?!?!) in place of the airbag. It's against federal regs to take the airbag out of your car, so the shops that are doing these mods are being hit with fines of up to $16k. No one, apparently, is concerned about the TV screen directly in the face of the driver.