Recently I was on top of a mountain servicing radio equipment. As I was leaving I was backing and lost site of a very large tree in my drivers side mirror. That's okay because my right-rear bumper found it! It hit hard enough to later note that it pushed it in and up. It needs to be replaced. There was no airbag deployment as I would have expected with such a hard hit.

Instead the truck jumped into drive and took off down hill through the closed gate, up and over a hill with small shrub trees to slow her down, both feet on the brakes, the e-brake pushed all the way down until finally it appeared to stall.

I damn near pooped my pants

What could have happened? The accelerator hasn't stuck -- it's almost as if the computer was commanded to take control and scream two blocks down hill. Fortunately this was a paved residential road. I was prepared to put it center mass into a tree. Had this been a typical radio site I'd have gone over the side and be counting daisy's.

I took out the front bumper and the back bumper, plus the grill and possibly the hood.

Shaken and definitely stirred...

 

Sorry to hear what happen. But you may not been going fast enough to cause the air bag to deploy. As far as the rest, no Ideal what happen there. But I would contact Chrysler and tell them or contact dodgecares and see if they can send out someone from NTSB, Because they can get the information out of the black box.

 

I didn't think the airbags would go off from a rear end hit, but not entirely sure. Also what year is your Durango, because I'm pretty sure all the first gens had mechanical throttle bodies, not drive by wire.

 

The Durango is a late 2003.