I have been out of action for more than 2 weeks due a personal emergency and have started really looking at this thread just 2-3 days back. So please allow me to jump in the middle of the on-going discussion.
First and foremost, my heart goes out to Arvind and his family who are going through a terrible time due to what happened. I sincerely hope and pray that Madhav gets better and recovers fully soon.
When I started reading the thread thoroughly from start yesterday, I was appalled by many of the comments. I have huge respect for this forum because of the maturity of the members here. So it was painful to witness the mindless Mahindra bashing (and even Tata in some posts) which has been going on, which is almost similar to the mob-violence that is so common nowadays.. just a sophisticated, polished-English version of it. There is no first-person account of what exactly happened. There has been no investigation (by police) about the accident itself (at least nothing shared on the thread) and no investigation (by manufacturer or any independent body) of the car involved to understand the reasons behind what happened. In that case, I fail to understand why so many well-educated and knowledgeable members jumped to the conclusion, putting the blame squarely on the car and the manufacturer.
I am not an expert in this area and have commented on neither the cause of the accident nor the air-bag deployment failure as I consider it irresponsible to comment on something without having some depth in the area and having a complete understanding of what happened. Instead, I chose to reach out to someone who has the domain experience and sought some insights which have been shared verbatim some 2-3 posts above this.
When I saw the accident car pics for the first time, even I thought that at least some airbags should have deployed. In fact, I would have
preferred if all airbags would have deployed providing some protection to the accident victim. But, please note that the car is a machine and it works as per
how it is designed and not as per what you and me would have
liked or preferred it to behave.
Are there any pointers to how the airbags in the XUV are designed to behave? Yes, just have a look at sandeepmdas's post and pics of owner's manual
in this post. Hasn't the manufacturer clearly stated that in case of a frontal impact from a tree or a pole, the airbags would not deploy? Look at the pic of the damage to the cross-member behind the front-bumper. The impact is exactly in the center just like a impact from a tree/pole. If the car is designed that way and it is explicitly stated in the owner's manual, why are so many on this thread expecting the car to behave any other way? Sanjeev has pointed out a clearly visible un-bent crumple-zone bar on the driver's side door. Whether you or me like it or not, a severe impact to that bar is necessary for deployment of the side airbags. That's the way the machine is designed to work and I am pretty sure that's the way it works across the industry. Just in case you are not aware, please note that Mahindras (or for that matter any car manufacturer) doesn't design/manufacture airbags. Airbag modules are sourced from a handful of suppliers globally and I don't believe the car manufacturer would be allowed to implement/configure them in their cars in whichever way they want. The airbag supplier would disown any accountability in that case.
Not directly applicable to this accident, but members have pointed out to another thread where a XUV toppled and side-airbags didn't deploy. Someone else has shared pic of another toppled XUV and lot of members are happy to feed those instances to their confirmation-bias and arrive at their own conclusions about airbag deployment in the XUV. How many have read sandeepmdas's post a few pages BEFORE and seen the illustration in the manual which clearly says that in case of a roll-over (a topple is first part of a rollover scenario) the side-airbags may not deploy? Why are so many people still expecting the side airbags to deploy in those cases?
Even if we assume that in Arvind's case the airbags should have deployed and they didn't due to a malfunction, how does one ascertain whether this is an isolated incident or an issue with specific batches or a fundamental design flaw with the model? Without any investigation, how and why did some members jumped to the conclusions - "are airbags really installed in the XUV?", "all XUVs are unsafe" and even "all Mahindra vehicles are unsafe"? Frankly, very disappointing! Was expecting better from the members of this respected forum.
The Mahindra statement talks about 7000 airbags consumed at dealerships. That means keeping aside the totaled vehicles (which would go to scrap mostly), there have been 7000 XUVs in which the airbags did deploy and were replaced as part of repairs. No idea how many XUVs have been in severe accidents and how many were totaled, but given that the total number of XUVs is about 2.19 lakh, isn't the 7000 number large enough to consider before members come to any sort of the conclusions about the safety of the XUV in general and probability of airbag deployment in particular?
How many here are aware of the ANCAP crash test rating for the XUV5OO? If you are not, please search on YouTube. A certification from an independent international third-party agency which specializes in the domain. Why are so many members ready to ignore that and claim that the XUV is a Indian jugaad vehicle?
Its time to keep your biases and prejudices aside and look at this case objectively.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roy.S TBHPian bking had posted pics of his Ford where both the airbags deployed even though the impact was on the side. If you go by Sanjeev's parameters this shouldn't have happened since the trigger zone for the front airbags would be in the front of the car. What am I missing here? |
Front airbags by definition are supposed to be triggered by a direct impact to the front. So what do you call it when the front airbags deploy in a side-impact scenario like what happened with tbhpian bking's Ford? Sorry for possibly jumping the gun (without having the complete details), but the word that comes to my mind is - malfunction.
Quote:
It's difficult to see the logic in having such limited impact zones to trigger the airbags.
|
Please understand that sensors are sophisticated pieces of hardware and don't come cheap. Anybody who has replaced any kind of sensor in any car and paid for it, would be able to relate to that comment. Yes, the manufacturer can design a car with sensors next to each other like a LED strip and have multiple of those sensor strips running all along the car's exteriors. But I don't believe its a realistic design approach given that every product is built to a cost. Are there other vehicles in the same segment which has more sensors than the XUV? I don't know. Knowledgeable members can possibly answer that.