[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by vin_b

Moderators please move this reply to appropriate thread if it doesn't fit here.

I happened to visit VW Mysore for my annual service and came across a curious case of airbag deployment. I saw a perfectly fine new Vento from the side near the body shop area but only to notice that the airbags was deployed. I assumed that the engineers might be testing out something and approached the vehicle just out of curiosity. When I had a talk with the mechanic, he said its accident vehicle and hence it was deployed.

Upon seeing the front bumper, I was shocked to say the least. The bumper was in intact with minor cracks in the front

Have a look the pictures which I took (sorry for the clarity). It looks more like a faulty airbag sensor than anything else to me. As per mechanic, the owner apparently is going for insurance claim and was so irritated that he went to extent of saying that he does not need airbags if its soo sensitive. Shouldn't this be covered under warranty for faulty sensor than blindly claiming insurance. Shouldn't VW be looking at this more seriously since such low speed impact can happen to anyone in bumper to bumper traffic

It is hard to draw conclusions without knowing the full picture. It could have been a collision with a relatively soft object such as an animal. Airbag deployment is dependent on so many variables. There will always be around 10% incidents where airbags malfunction; either they don't deploy or end up deploying when not needed. It is theoretically possible to have the deceleration required to trigger the sensors without damaging the front end too much if the car collided with a softer object at a low speed. The speed might have been just high enough to trigger deployment but not enough to cause extensive damage. Aproximately 20 kmph would be my guess.

[Rehaan]

Some relevant pages on when the airbags Do & Don't deploy - from the Maruti Celerio owner's manual:

[SmartCat]

The little car seeing "stars" on impact in the Celerio handbook is quite funny!

[GTO]

Rohan Hoble shares his experience. He's curious to know why the airbags didn't deploy?! Whatever the technical reasons, this is an accident where airbags could potentially prevent a fatality.

Link to the Fortuner Thread

Car met with an accident on 07 May 2017. Incident happened late night in Goa. The car banged two trees and flipped 3 times in the field. Luckily nothing happened to me.

The car was totally damaged from all sides and not a single air bag was activated.

Vehicle is under total loss as repair estimate is 9.32 lakhs.

[BoneCollector]

Originally Posted by GTO

Rohan Hoble shares his experience. He's curious to know why the airbags didn't deploy?! Whatever the technical reasons, this is an accident where airbags could potentially prevent a fatality.

Link to the Fortuner Thread



Attachment 1650015

What I can see from the snaps is that the main impact appears to be on the centre of front bumper. Thereafter the car would have toppled or maybe there are some other sequence of events. But one thing looks for sure is that the Airbag impact sensors have not been activated mostly due to hit at centre of bumper. This Innova I reckon came with only front airbags. So in case of rollover, there is no question of airbags inflating. These snaps are from Owner's Manual of Brezza, mostly same in all Maruti cars.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by GTO

Rohan Hoble shares his experience. He's curious to know why the airbags didn't deploy?! Whatever the technical reasons, this is an accident where airbags could potentially prevent a fatality.

Link to the Fortuner Thread



Attachment 1650015

IMHO, the frontal impact seems to have not gone beyond the bumper cross member and radiator cross member and the engine bay looks pretty much in good shape. This should be due to hitting a low height obstacle like a milestone or a small rock. The upper radiator member looks intact, which indicates that the tree didnt hit the center of the vehicle.

If the car has flipped, it will be mostly due to impact on one side, which I suspect is the drivers side. They have not shared pictures of the panels on the driver side. The rest of the damage is mainly caused due to the roll over and possibly the passenger side wheels have run over an obstacle which has flipped the car to the right. Hence, the primary impact does not look like it had to trigger airbags, like how the manual of the Brezza has mentioned.

Why I say that the car has flipped to the right side is that the right A pillar is deformed, and the left A Pillar only is dented. The first flip will have the highest energy and the drivers side has hit the ground first, followed by the passenger side. Unless the entire car is picturised, its difficult to analyse beyond this.

[GTO]

Sudarshan S shares his story:

I bought a new Hyundai Elite i20 Asta (O) model on 01/09/2017 from Sukrith Hyundai, Madurai, Tamil Nadu bearing Registration No. TN58AP8488. On 10/09/2017, I met with a head-on collision with a Honda City which was travelling in the opposite lane on the National highway. It jumped on the wrong side due to a tyre burst and lost control, which resulted in this head on collision.

The Elite I20 was severely hit on the front side, but none of the Airbags deployed at the time of impact (despite wearing seat belts).

[Nissan1180]

Going through all these incidents, I have one question: Why don't car manufacturers include more collision sensors? Why is it that only collisions that trigger specific sensors located at specific positions are used in cars? Or is it that companies fool people by not giving enough sensors instead?

It seems truly weird that we have great Accelerometers in our smartphones but we still don't have enough of them in cars to trigger airbag deployment. In fact, a sudden deceleration beyond what's possible using brakes should trigger deployment of atleast the driver airbag. It appears that car makers haven't progressed much in the three decades since the airbag was invented. Or at least, the products they provide to the mass market makes me think so.

[binod049]

One of my colleagues met with an accident last week in his XUV 500 where he rear-ended a Chevy Tavera near our office on ORR. As per him, the Tavera guy braked suddenly as an Indica in front of him stopped abruptly. The car is in service center, but my friend is surprised that the Airbags didn’t deploy. The speed at the time of impact was said to be around 50/kmph. Do you guys think he should escalate the issue (non-deployment of Airbags) with Mahindra?

[mpksuhas]

Originally Posted by binod049

One of my colleagues met with an accident last week in his XUV 500 where he rear-ended a Chevy Tavera

I think he would have hit Tavera at an angle to get this damage on bonnet. That could be a reason that sensor on number plate height did not get triggered.

[gkveda]

On a lighter side, airbags are like health insurance policies. We purchase them by paying heavy premiums in the desire of getting the claims settled when most needed(Read Hospitalized). But, the insurance companies will come up with some * and small font disclaimers to reject the claims.

Similarly, we pay heavy extra premium prices for the cars and their air bags for better safety. But, when accidents happen the airbags simply reject the deployment by giving some silly reasons like was not driver wearing seat belt, hit from an angle, speed was low and * disclaimers(As stated by company as "Reasons for not deploying").

Seeing all this, I have written a Murphy's law.

All Safety features(Read ABS, Airbag deployment, certification from reputed organization on safety index) are applicable only for cars that have not met with accidents yet.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by gkveda

Similarly, we pay heavy extra premium prices for the cars and their air bags for better safety. But, when accidents happen the airbags simply reject the deployment by giving some silly reasons like was not driver wearing seat belt, hit from an angle, speed was low and * disclaimers(As stated by company as "Reasons for not deploying").

That is a very skeptical if not to say apparently, completely uninformed statement.

The value of air bags in terms of preventing death and or serious injury has been proven for many years.

Yes, there might be occasions it did not work but that is really a very small percentage indeed. There have been cases where people claim the airbags should have deployed and did not. Without really understanding what happened, such statements are just individual opinions without much basis to it.

And sometimes people just have the wrong expectations on how these things work. When looking at this last photograph and having no other information, but I am not surprised the airbags did not deploy. The speed is irrelevant. The deceleration and deformation is what causes bodily harm. Again, there isn't much to go by, but it doesn't look too bad. Were all the occupant wearing seatbelts, was anybody injured? You don't want the airbags going off to quickly either.

I do not want to generalize or oversimplify. But if you find yourself in an accident, wearing a seatbelt and the airbags did not deploy and you walk away from the accident with very minor injuries, it is very likely the airbags were not deployed by design. Simply not a bad enough accident in terms of deceleration and or deformation

I remember when seatbelts became compulsory in the early 70s. Till date there are those who claim people died because they were wearing a seatbelt. And could not get out of for instance a car that went into the water. Those are very sad cases of course. But the same thing is true, seatbelts have saved thousands and thousands of lives and prevented even more people from serious injury.

Airbags, seat belts in my opinion, is a good case where the advantages outweigh the possible disadvantages by a very, very large margin.

[ajmat]

I dont understand the disappointment that the airbags did not deploy while the occupants are safe. Be thankful that you did not have to pay to replace the module.

The sensors trigger based on the intensity of the impact. Looking at the above three cases

1: The Innova got hit sqaurely in the middle missing the airbag impact sensors
2: The side of the front wing of the i20 hit the City - far away from the front impact sensors
3: Looks like the Tavera braked hard, the rear lifted and the bumper hit the headlights instead of the bumper whether the sesnors are mounted

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by binod049

One of my colleagues met with an accident last week in his XUV 500 where he rear-ended a Chevy Tavera near our office on ORR.Do you guys think he should escalate the issue (non-deployment of Airbags) with Mahindra?

I think if I were your friend, I would have been happy that the impact was dissipated within the headlight assembly, bonnet and the bumper. It has hardly reached the structure of the car. Now the repairs would mostly be part replacements rather than having to straighten the structure, replace the apron and so on. In which case, the airbag would have had no role in making the situation better. Even if it had deployed, it would have caused injuries on the driver and passenger instead of nothing in this case. I will come back to this issue further down the post.

Originally Posted by gkveda

On a lighter side, airbags are like health insurance policies. We purchase them by paying heavy premiums in the desire of getting the claims settled when most needed(Read Hospitalized).

All Safety features(Read ABS, Airbag deployment, certification from reputed organization on safety index) are applicable only for cars that have not met with accidents yet.

Sorry to be harsh, it cant get more absurd than this. Airbags are not balloons which pop out of the dash and say "Hey, everything's fine", nor soft pillows which comfort the occupants and make them realise that they made use of the feature they paid for. They are pyrotechnic devices which literally explode into the face of the occupants and can inflict injuries onto them. Hence, the simplest way to set expectations on when the airbag will trigger leaving away physics and vehicle dynamics is to check if the injuries inflicted onto the occupants during crash > Injuries that an airbag is capable of inflicting. Hence, if a crash was severe enough to smash my face, then yes I do expect the airbags to reduce that to a couple of bruises and burn marks. But for something that would have hardly given a jerk to my hands, I would not want the airbag to aggravate the condition.

Accidents in India are not always by the book. When driving conditions are ideal, then the nature of accidents are predictable. But in our country, things never go by the book, which means that crashes happen in random fashion. Hence, even if companies started to tweak airbag systems to our markets, then it can never be tested to a certain set of use cases.

But, when accidents happen the airbags simply reject the deployment by giving some silly reasons like was not driver wearing seat belt, hit from an angle, speed was low and * disclaimers(As stated by company as "Reasons for not deploying").

If these reasons are silly, then it is better off not to invest on such features. If the occupant is not wearing seatbelt, the airbag will give the final nail on the coffin during a crash. Then the same bunch of people will claim airbags are unsafe and write theories against them.

[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by ajmat

I dont understand the disappointment that the airbags did not deploy while the occupants are safe. Be thankful that you did not have to pay to replace the module.

The sensors trigger based on the intensity of the impact. Looking at the above three cases

1: The Innova got hit sqaurely in the middle missing the airbag impact sensors
2: The side of the front wing of the i20 hit the City - far away from the front impact sensors
3: Looks like the Tavera braked hard, the rear lifted and the bumper hit the headlights instead of the bumper whether the sesnors are mounted

I don't believe airbag deployment is contingent upon hitting a sensor directly. The sensors measure sudden deaccelaration and deploy airbags regardless of whether they receive a direct hit. I think the impact velocity and the seriousness of the crash were relatively mild in the past three cases. If we look at crash test videos which reflect damage caused by a 50 to 60 kmph crash and compare it to the XUV and the Hyundai, we can see much less damage. The stated impact velocity of 50 kmph for the XUV is unlikely to be true. Of course the driver might have seen 50 on the speedo but he is bound to have braked hard and the final impact was probably around 20 kmph. The bonnet has crumpled up and this makes the damage look more severe.

In case of the Innova, there is little frontal damage. Most of the damage occurred from a rollover. Side airbags should have deployed but this variant might not be equipped with them.

Finally, airbags fail in about 5% of crashes worldwide. I suspect the failure rate in India is even higher due to rough conditions, improper tampering with electrical systems, lesser exposure to and lesser knowledge about airbags for service technicians and overall lack of adherence to standards in manufacturing and servicing vehicles.