I have a question for many of you out there. I had an accident on Christmas Eve. A young lady tried to beat me through an intersection, she turning left in front of me without the right of way, and I Tee-boned her. She was driving a Nissan Murano and I totaled her whole right side practically. My SCREW suffered a damaged right front fender, hood, grill, light package, bumper and some below the surface damage found during tear down. I am very impressed with the way the SCREW came out of the event frankly, given the impact, however, I quickly realized that although her air bags deployed, mine did not!? Although I'm glad they didn't, given that my family and I are all okay, I would have thought that the impact was easily significant enough to have caused their deployment. Has anyone else out there experienced anything similar or have any rationale for them not deploying? I'm concerned that when I do need them to deploy, they may not.

 

Air bags can be stupid like that(from what I've heard) It all has to do with the air bag sensors. How they are jolted, where they get hit. They are especially weird in offset crashes. Stupid, I know but what can we do about it.

 

Sometimes, I think that you have to be going over a certain speed before the computer/sensors allow them to deploy?.....

 

Airbags deploy based on deceleration (and other factors), that is how fast you suddenly slow down due to the impact. Did you notice which airbags deployed on the Nissan? Probably the side impact airbags. What year is your truck? The airbag system on your truck is probably not as advanced as the Nissan. Or there could have been a mal****ion in your truck.

 

The truck is an '04. The fact that the sensors might be faulty is of course my bigget concern. I was probably going between 25 and 30mph when I slammed, and I mean 'slammed' on the brakes. It was only her side bags that deployed, which made sense since I did not hit her front end at all. I really would have thought that mine should have deployed. I could be wrong however and may not have met the threshold-

 

all air bags work under the same rule 3 sensors onboard, two must be "tripped" to deploy the bags

two front crash sensors, and a vehicle decel sensor.

if the blow is ofset (with a lighter vehicle), or a glancing blow you more then likely wont trip the bags to deploy.
-Patrick