[Rahulbarik]

Hello, My name is Rahul and i belong from Kolkata. I am new to this forum and would be my first post here.
Unfortunately, i will not be able to start my journey in team-bhp on a happy note as i have recently lost my 2016 Ford Ecosport 1.5 tdci Titanium + in an almost fatal crash. Yet luckily, i lived. And lived to tell the story.
I would just write down what happened as things unfolded as i am still in a state of shock even after 1 month.

We were 3 friends returning from a marriage and the car was driven by my friend, while i was on the passenger side and one more friend on the rear seat. We were travelling around 80 kmph on a state by-pass road at around 3 am, when a Tata 407 came head on which made us serve left and off the road completely with all 4 wheels outside the road surface and almost into a roadside pond which was at least 4 feet lower than the road itself. Our car tilted left with left wheels touching the water, while still at 80 kmph, when my friend swerved right to get back up on the road but couldn't as the wheels couldn't grip. He kept on accelerating with the wheels spinning, hoping to bring the car up the road and avoiding getting submerged in the pond. The car was still probably at 80 kmph when suddenly the tyres gripped somehow and made the car jump up from the pond and on the road resulting in the car toppling on the left side and rolling atleast 8 times and hitting a light post and breaking a wall after hitting it and god knows what else. Finally the ordeal stopped, with the car plunging on another pond couple of hundred metres down the other side of the road, just giving enough time to get out before getting 80% submerged. Luckily it was 3-3:30 am in the morning and there was no traffic.
My car is a TDCI TITANIUM PLUS with 6 airbags and NOT A SINGLE AIRBAG DEPLOYED. NOT EVEN THE SIDE AND CURTAIN AIRBAGS. Yes, we were having our seat belts on.
The front windshield glass also shattered (on first impact with road) like cheap glass which it is not supposed to. The glass is supposed to be laminated from both sides as far as my knowledge goes, to prevent it from shattering and falling off and becoming like armed splinters(which is actually what happened and injured us, specially me with glass pierced on my whole body).
While the built quality of the car saved our lives with just bruises from the flying glass splinters, from the horrific accident, I'm still in awe as to how not a single airbag deployed.
Ford Workshop is giving lame excuses that the car was not hit from the front. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SIDE SENSORS FORD? They said side gets activated after the front sensors are triggered which i found to be a lame answer. When i showed them a video on YouTube on Ecosport crash test from side with the side and curtains deployed, they didn't have an answer.
Before i take it with Ford, i thought of getting valuable inputs from this forum and getting myself armed sufficiently so as to not look like a fool when ford gives me another lame excuse.
I would now let the pictures do the talking.

Special mention for Ford RSA!
These guys are amazing. They kept in touch with me right from the time of the incident and kept me updated. They kept on trying to pull out the car for 2 days with multiple failed attempts and survey of the location, after which they finally did it after they brought in 2 Hydra cranes.

And lastly Kudos to HDFC Ergo!
They declared it a constructive total loss, handed over the legal documents for the same. No drama, no questions, they simply paid up. All from the comfort of my home. That's how easy it was. All within less than a month.

[Guna]

Very scary and unfortunate but glad that you are OK.
Airbags probably did not deploy because there was no frontal collision but I wonder why can't cars have sensors to detect rollovers.

[gkveda]

Instances like this will reinforce the evidences that all these claimed safety features are hit or miss and never reliable. There are more than 100 cases in our forum where airbags deployment discussion have happened with heated arguments.

Forget all logics reasons and justifications from the dealers, manufacturers or R&D groups. 95% of the accident occurs with 3 generic patterns. Either head-on, topples or side collision. If airbags don't deploy during any of these collisions, then, it simply means, they are not designed to address needs of the accidents. Then, What is the use of those safety features?

Some one has said "We purchase things that we don't need with the money we don't have to please someone who we don't like." These safety features also falls under the same category. We purchase cars with safety features that we never intend to use by paying hefty money that we don't have, to please someone in the friend circle to boast another special feature (6 or 8 or 10 airbags )and it never works when required.

And we get brilliant explanation by dealers finally which states our driving itself was faulty and therefore airbags didn't deploy.

Below are the reasons dealers give for non deployment of airbags

1. No head-on collision
When an accident is about to happen in next 4-5 secs, Should I avoid head-on and try to escape major mishap or go and do head-on to get the airbags deployed?

2. Vehicle was not running at the required speed
So, are they expecting that I will increase the speed and acceleration when I am left with 4-5 secs for collision for airbags to deploy.

3. Impact was not adequate enough for airbags to deploy
Oh, ok. What do I do for an effective impact next time ?

Common man is very intelligent. What ever hype manufacturers, reviewers and dealership give to these safety features, he does take it with a pinch of salt.

Theoretically, is there any difference between this car and say, Maruti 800 with respect to safety features?( let us not talk about metal thickness etc)

[asit.kulkarni93]

Thank God you and your friends are safe.

Did the roof bend this way after the impact or while towing? Also the A-pillar has a visible bend. Did it happen during the accident?

[BoneCollector]

Really glad to know you guys are safe after such a horrendous accident.

As far as the curtain airbags are concerned, I've seen a couple of Ford Ecosport's at a service center with only curtain airbags deployed due to hit from the side. One car had left side airbags deployed due to T-boning and another had right side due to a side swipe by a truck. So if they say that it can get triggered only after the front airbag is deployed is all BS.

[batish]

Originally Posted by Rahulbarik

My car is a TDCI TITANIUM PLUS with 6 airbags and NOT A SINGLE AIRBAG DEPLOYED. NOT EVEN THE SIDE AND CURTAIN AIRBAGS

Glad you're fine!

Regarding airbags, aren't the side impact sensors in door side? AFAIK, Ecosport has no rollover sensors which can detect the toppling or any such other rollover.
It's really unfortunate none of them deployed.

[shancz]

Quite an ordeal, thankfully ends in a safe and happy note

Side airbags are supposed to deploy on side impacts, that's the objective and definition. That's why there is a side impact test and a pole test in NCAP.
Check your owner's manual for deployment of airbags no further proofs needed and take it up with Ford since your service center is useless.

[IamNikhil]

Absolutely horrific! Really glad to know that all 3 of you are doing okay.

With regard to the airbags not getting deployed, I think a lot of "claimed" safety features across cars are just branding/marketing, considering there are a miniscule number of cases where they are put to test and the manufacturer always has the "margin of error" logic to underscore their defence. IMHO, it's high time the government takes these car companies to task and enforce strict safety inclusions without any contestation. These same companies bend over backwards to follow govt norms in Western countries, but treat Indian regulations with blatant disdain.

Glad to know that HDFC Ergo made your life easier with the Total Loss formalities. Wish you happy days ahead and safe ownership of a new car. Take care!

[Risky4327]

Unfortunate accident but by grace of almighty you are safe.
I couldn't understand the logic for side airbags not being deployed, however, it reinforces the importance of solid build quality in a passenger vehicle.
At highway speeds, it saves lives and at city speeds it saves costs related to minor body works.

That reassuring "Thud" of closing doors in Ford cars really mean something.

[iamahunter]

Thankgod you'll are safe.

Man 8 rolls is too much for a car to take on. I don't even want to think what would have been the condition of the car if it was a Maruti or a Hyundai.

I was just taking a look at the side-impact test of the Ecosport, and noticed that the major impact(while testing) is on the bottom part of the car, like when car is T-boned. Just attaching the screenshot below.

In this case, there is no direct impact over on that part of the car, possibly the cause of airbags not deploying. I may be wrong, but companies really need to figure-out the placement of those side impact sensors.

Airbags are not the only one's that save lives, its the built quality as well. Airbags would definitely save one from the initial impact, but incase of multiple roll-overs, they would be of not much use. However the car's raw material(read metal thickness) and chassis strength would keep the body shell intact. Simply put - 6 airbags in a tin can are of absolutely no use.

[fiat_tarun]

Originally Posted by Rahulbarik

...
My car is a TDCI TITANIUM PLUS with 6 airbags and NOT A SINGLE AIRBAG DEPLOYED. NOT EVEN THE SIDE AND CURTAIN AIRBAGS. Yes, we were having our seat belts on.
...
Ford Workshop is giving lame excuses that the car was not hit from the front. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SIDE SENSORS FORD?

That is a horrific crash and I am glad you all came out safely. Having seen Airbag ECU development from up close, unfortunately very few cars in the non-luxury segment have rollover sensing capability in the Airbag ECU.

Airbag sensors work on the principle of acceleration change and hence can detect the sudden deceleration of an impact to trigger the airbags. To detect a rollover you need a 'yaw rate' sensor which is part of high end Airbag ECU hardware and rarely seen in our everyday cars.

With your description of the accident, I'm trying to think if ESP would have played a role in preventing the rollover, as it sounds like a typical double lane change kind of a scenario at relatively high speed.

[rajathv8]

Your ES saved you, the RSA helped you and the Insurance covered you. This is possibly the best outcome for anyone involved in a crash as mutilating as this. Glad to see you guys made it out and wish you a speedy physical and mental recovery.

About the Airbags, lets take a step back and understand that if Airbags deploy when they are not intended to, it may cause more harm than good. Lets accept that it is impossible to comprehend all situations into the deployment algorithms at a given price point. Lets also accept that for every case of questioned airbag non-deployment there are probably a far larger number of cases where they deployed correctly.

To truly understand why it did not deploy in this specific case would warrant a technical analysis of the type and placement of sensors plus the algorithm and crash forces/sequence involved.

Thank you for sharing.

[MS_Auto]

I am glad that you and the other occupants are safe in this case.

Recollecting a crash that happened to me in an Audi A4.
Accident was a result of multiple factors:
1. Pitch darkness due to peak winters combined with early morning
2. Infrastructure work happening on an highway
3. Lack of streetlights and large sized reflective sign boards
4. Delay in identifying that we were about to crash and last minute attempt to slow down from 80kmph
5. And then there could be more reasons to add on here.

The end result was a car which looked more like a hatchback than a sedan after multiple roll overs.
The car had good build quality and none of us had any visible injuries. I had the seatbelt on, but that did not prevent me from having a spinal cord injury that left me without movement, control and sensation in the lower half of my body.

Even I was left wondering as to why the airbags did not go off in spite of a full blown frontal impact. Because, did it function how we would normally expect it to function, then I would not be left with a permanent disability.

One of my colleagues, then, had worked with an airbag manufacturer for about 20+ years and these were her words, "For the airbags to deploy, there are many factors, some of them being: location of sensors vis a vis location of impact, intensity of the impact, weather the sensors were working or they have failed, etc. Having said that, we have experienced that in a high number of test cases, the air bags do not deploy."

It is difficult to comment on how your accident could have been avoided or even to pinpoint as to why the curtain airbags did not deploy. However, one of the probable causes could be that the location housing the sensors for the side air bags did not feel the in the required intensity vs the impact on the rest of the vehicle body.

I normally avoid late night drives till avoidable or would drive slower on unknown roads post my experience. But, that's just me and the approach may not work for all of us on the road.

[Apex1815]

Glad to know that all of you are safe after this horrific incidence.

Just to add up to your apprehensions related to the glasses :

As per CMVR Requirement only the Front Windshield is supposed to be the Laminated Glass (i.e the glass with an intermittent layer of thin plastic sheet to avoid flying or shattering of glasses in the event of an impact).

The side glasses are allowed to be the Toughened ones (That means the side glasses need not have the intermittent laminated sheet).

[veedub89]

Good to know you and your friends are safe!

The side airbags deploy when there is a hit to the side of the body. The sensors for these side airbags are on the B-pillars (lower down) and on the side of the body and not say on the roof.

Your car has had very little damage to the sides. Only the roof is crumpled.

Most cars don't have rollover sensors either.

Combination of above two factors is why your side airbags didn't deploy.

As for the front airbags, there is hardly any hit on the front of the car. So again, no impact on the sensor so no airbag.