air bags don't deploy?
 

Greetings all,

This is a sad tale of a 2005 MCS named SPOON who was t-boned a couple weekends ago. It had snowed the night before so the roads were either icy or snow packed. Apparently some idiot in a truck thought that 4 wheel drive meant 4 wheel stop and that red lights were optional for them. SPOON had a green light and was 3/4 of the way through the intersection when the truck slammed into the side of him. To add insult to injury the crazy b*tch that was driving the truck swerved after hitting SPOON and smashed into the front of SPOON as well.

Needless to say SPOON is undriveable. My question to the MINI community is this, "When are side curtain airbags and front airbags suppose to deploy?" None of the air bags deployed when SPOON was struck.

I'd go into more detail about the accident but that will have to wait until later when I can actually write about it without inserting a cuss word in every sentence. The accident was two weeks ago and I'm still a little pissed off.

Sounds to me like your side airbags would have deployed in this accident.

Front air bags... not suprised at all they didn't. Those are engineered to only deploy on a head-on or just slightly off-centered head-on collision. The sensors are located about 18 inches back from the front of the bonnet, near the crumple zones. You really don't want them going off unless you NEED them because they can cause some minor injuries when they do deploy.

Without seeing pics of the damage, it's hard to say more about it.

Hope your MINI recovers and glad you weren't injured badly !

The impact on the side was closer towards the rear passenger area. I'll upload pics in a minute.

i think each bank of airbags are deployed by the place of impact. sensors in the bumper are for the front .
if you were hit in the side first.. your side curtains will go. i dont think a bump in the front after that will deploy the front bags.. lots of time the bags will cause injury after the fact..

glad you are ok..

the car.. ??
well.. it can be fixed or replaced.

Here's a link to the pics I uploaded. I wasn't the one driving SPOON at the time. My wife was. We're lucky the person behind her witnessed the whole thing and hung around to give a statement.

After looking at the pictures again, I noticed the side impact was more towards the rear of SPOON so that's probably why the side curtains didn't deploy.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...y.php?cat=2326

When airbags where first being used, it was easy to estimate when they should have or would have gone off. Now the computer that determines when an airbag goes off, calculates so many factors, it is difficult to try to say.

Where you in the car? Did you hit your head on anything? If not, SPOON did good! If you did hit your head, maybe something is malfunctioning.

I occasionally see cars that have very little damage, but airbags have gone off. And visa-versa, a LOT of damage, but no airbags deployed at all.

General rule of thumb that people still seem to want to go by is, front end impact of 15-20+ will deploy fronts, just as a point of reference for you. BUT, this is not always the case. :)

Good luck with a quick recovery for SPOON! :thumbsup:

Ah, that sucks, sad to see those pictures! Beautiful mini though, it will fix up like new soon.

I would have never guessed that the rear damage was done first. I'm guessing by the looks of it, the computers where sensing a rotational impact and is why no airbags where deployed. Your neck is probably quite sore though. Goodluck with your recovery too!

:cry:Sad pictures indeed. But we're glad to hear your wife is okay - the MINI did the job and took the impact...Hopefully SPOON will be good as new soon..:)

Donna:cool::grin::cool:

As others have said, the car electronics decides whether to deploy an airbag based on many things, not least being the change-in-speed of the MINI as the impact occurs.
In this case, the truck was probably not going too fast due to hopefully the owner trying to slow down, and the icy roads mean the MINI would have been able to be pushed/slid across the road ... the impact of the truck was likely not a harsh sudden one and the rear impact would have further reduced the forces by giving some rotational aspect, so the car decided the airbag wasn't needed and avoided deploying it. This is all part of trying to minimize the amount of re-work needed afte an accident.

Hope your wife is fine!

last year, I was hit quite hard (T-boned; the vehicle that hit me was going about 35 - 40 MPH). anyway, not one airbag went off.

Looks like the his was on the passenger side. Was there a passenger? If not the computer is probably programmed to not deploy the passenger side curtain air bags.

MirthScout makes a good point. If the seat sensor didn't see a passenger, there would be no reason to trigger the airbags. Unless the impact was great enough that the computer decided to trigger the drivers side, too. Know way to tell how they have that programmed.

No passenger. She was alone until the truck tried to get in the passenger side. Luckily SPOON wouldn't have any of that.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the side curtains read the seat sensors as suggested. Obviously the drivers side wouldn't deploy unless you were hit on that side... It's saving itself to deploy if the car was spun around and there was a hard secondary impact on the drivers side...

You should register a complaint with Consumer Affairs and the NHTSA.

Also, this could be relevent:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...w_airbags.html

Looking around at how the 5 series did so poorly in side impact tests, people having transmission failures, and other issues many are having/have had (including those I have experienced) and the company not recognizing problems.. well, I have concerns about BMW products :(

So many good explanations why the airbags likely worked exactly correct, then suddenly we have a suggestion to threaten :(

Huh :confused: Registering issues is not a threat, it is a useful way for them to track problems with vehicles and results in actions, when necessary, that truly help protect consumers. Companies, including auto companies, have shown that they are often not best left up to their own self governing to manage these things (things like recalls they could consider bad PR, cost them money to deal with or perhaps leave them liable) and it can take people to actually report incidents and problems to outside organizations like Consumer Affairs, the BBB or NHTSA for patterns to be revealed and have these issues addressed as needed.

The airbags did just what they were supposed to do. No passenger so no side airbag, same as what would happen if hit from the front.

So, side airbags only are supposed to deploy on the side you are stuck on? Then in the case of being hit hard on the passenger side it wouldn't protect the driver's head from smashing into the side and window and help protect against whiplash from that? Yikes, I thought side airbags would offer that kind of protection :(

But remember that if you are hit on the passenger side while driving you will actually be forced towards the center of the car, away from the door. Side airbags would do nothing for you except get in the way. The car would be moving away from the impact thus lessening any impact you may have against the door/window.

I see what you are saying, but, as in this accident, he was hit more then once ("the truck swerved after hitting SPOON and smashed into the front of SPOON as well"). In any case, considering the circumstances and force I'd want to be certain that the airbags actually did function as they were supposed to vs speculate. I still think registering with the NHTSA is a good idea, if there is an issue with malfunctions they will compile the info and help address it (and I hope notify anyone who registered with an issue).

Scott's exactly right. The airbag is only going to deploy when there is a sufficient impact on that side of the car... apparently, in this case, there wasn't. Was the driver injured by striking the window? If not, then they weren't hit hard enough on the driver's side to do the trick.

Think of it this way - you get hit on the passenger side - and pushed into traffic where you are then hit on the driver's side a half second later- would you rather the driver's curtain be wasted on the first impact, or ready to deploy on the second impact? That's the way it works...

As I understand it though, side airbags are often designed to stay inflated longer to protect occupants in rollover crashes and such so yes, in that case it seems that it should go off sooner to protect the people from injury. But again, not all airbags are the same, not all manufacturers sensors are the same or set to go off at the same speeds or circumstances, so I certainly can't say - I just think the fact that none of the airbags deployed should be considered by people who know for sure.

Take another look at the front end damage, looks to be fairly minimal. And it wasn't even a classic front end hit, more like at an angle. I wouldn't expect the airbags to deploy in this kind of accident.

Was someone injured because an airbag did not inflate? NO! They worked exactly as they are designed to!

Why would you want the additional expense of replacing airbags after an accident for no reason?