Good Evening all,

I am hoping someone can provide technical feedback on airbag deployment, or lack there of.

My wife was involved in a minor accident yesterday. She was traveling 30-35 mph and OP traveling towards her decided to to turn left in front of her. OP ticketed for not yielding right of way.

I'll leave all the other details out, but she tried to put her foot through the floor and made contact with rear quarter of OP's van.

The front end of her Durango is totaled and is undrivable.

We, and the officer were surprised the airbag did not deploy.

Any feedback on criteria of deployment or professional info would be appreciated.

thank you.

 

Does the 'rango have side curtain air bags? I would think they should have deployed. But, the air bag in the steering wheel only deploys with a very narrow angle of frontal collision. If she just caught a corner, then it likely wouldn't trigger, however, if she had a pretty solid hit, with most of the front contacting the other vehicle, then it prolly should have deployed.

 

All depends on speed and angle of impact.

 

both the impact sensor and a safeing sensor in the orc module must activate to deploy the airbags. both may not have tripped due to what was previously posted....speed/force and impact angle.

another possiblity:

if an existing system fault was present pre-accident, the restraint system would be disabled.
Was the airbag warning light on before the accident?
It should come on briefly as a systems check at start up and then stay off. the module runs continuous state of health checks and will illuminate the airbag light/disable the system if a fault is detected.

 

Thanks to all for the replies.

There were no faults or dummy lights prior to accident.

contact was almost square from the Durango's front end to the side of the van at rear wheel.

i swear I could tell the front end damage pulled towards passenger side which was consistent with OP moving through turn in that direction.

i found a lot of info on speed, force, impact, angle, etc.

much more involved and opinions are.......... we all know.

thanks again.

 

Likely it was the VAN's motion dragging the front of the durango around that prevented the airbag from going off.

They get REAL specific about parameters for such an event.

 

You said she had been traveling 30-35mph, but mashed the brake when this joker pulled across her path.

If she got her speed below 30 mph AND the vehicle she hit 'gave' by crumpling or sliding or both, then the force of the impact was NOT great enough to deploy the airbags.

The computer knows what it's doing.

I struck a deer at just below 30mph in a VW, causing 8k in damage and destroying the impact sensors, but the bags didn't deploy because the deer was not a solid immovable object.

If your wife had hit a wall, the bags would have deployed - if she had been going faster upon impact, the bags would have deployed.

You didn't mention that she was injured so the airbags were not necessary for her to walk away.

Airbags can cause unneeded damage and injury if they deploy for any impact.

 

Estimate cam back at $6k yesterday.

Thanks for the comparable situations to share with my wife.

I'm confident now the airbags did the right thing in this situation.

My wife cam out of it with only a bit of soreness, so we're thankful for that and the feedback provided.

Be safe all.

 

I'm of the opinion of the others and think that it wasn't needed so the car didn't deploy it.

Now if your wife would have been hurt and airbag deployment would have prevented her injury, then that's another matter. The fact that it didn't go off and she wasn't injured tells me that it wasn't needed for that impact and the system is working correctly.

I don't think you'll get a straight answer from Chrysler on that one though. They don't exactly want to volunteer those parameters of when the airbag should deploy and when it shouldn't because of all the factors involved being highly individualized to each case and the potential for someone to try and claim product safety default if it doesn't go off after being under an understanding that it should have. My guess is they will tell you what I told you which is it didn't go off because it wasn't supposed to.