On Friday September 30 I was involved in an accident. A woman decided to turn left in front of my Ram in which I was traveling at 57 mph. Unfortunately there was absolutely nothing I could do. I didn't have any time to even react. I ripped the front end off of her Dodge Grand Caravan and sent her in a spin cycle of one complete revolution plus an additional 270 degrees for good measure. My Ram proceeded to travel an additional 123 ft. in a near perfect straight line. The floor board was pushed up restricting the movement of the brake pedal. The woman, who happened to be 5 months pregnant, was rushed immediately to the local hospital and is extremely fortunate to be OK(and so is baby - THANK GOD). She was wearing her seat belt and her air bags deployed. I was also wearing my seat belt and walked away with some bruises across my chest and a nasty "burn" on my neck from the belt. My air bag never deployed[sm=dontgetit.gif] and my nose and lungs are grateful I guess. These pictures I'm going to try to post don't really show the true damage, like being able to look inside the Caravan V-6 and see the valve springs and a couple of pistons. I guess the moral of the story is please wear your seatbelt, they saved three lives in an extremely hard hit.

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That sucks, will the insurance company total your truck or are they gonna fix it for you?

 

Not sure right now. Vehicle has been towed to a body shop that my neighbor works at. He said that from his initial look it is going to be close. He suspects frame, transmission linkage(Ram downshifted to 1st after impact with ~ 8000 RPM from what I remember), front suspension, front transfer case, and interior replacement(had window down and interior covered in Trans fluid from van) along with sheet metal repairs and replacement and many other damaged things to run the cost close to the value of the truck. It was only 6 months old with 9200 miles on it. So, I guess I have to wait and see.[sm=headbang.gif]

 

OUCH!!!!

Man, I'm sorry to hear about your truck. That literally sucks. Fortunately, like you said, no one was severely injured and everyone was able to walk away. Peoples lives are more important then some stupid truck/car.

That said, I know how I am about any vehicle I own and it would drive me nuts not to mention **** me off to no end. I'm just glad that truck and caravan did their jobs in protecting both of you. Hopefully they total that truck because from what I can see, it would almost cost more to fix it then it would to total it.

Look at it this way, if they total it, you can go get ya a newer truck

 

sorry to hear about the accident. they can really shake you up. As for the reason why your airbags ddint go off is most likely because they are not just triggered by an impact on the front but also take into account the decelleration of the vehicle. You stated that your truck kept going. It sounds like it worked or didnt as it should have. Your vehicle didnt decelerate fast enough to to trigger the airbags.

 

Glad everyone is okay. Looks like it did some extensive damage to both vehicles. I hope that both will be totalled to keep headaches to a minimum, trust me on that one.

 

That truck is totalled for sure.

 

sorry to hear about your truck, but the important thing is that everyone is ok, you can replace a truck, but you cant replace people. hopefully everything works out for ya

 

I'm sure not an expert on air bag systems, but I thought air bags were supposed to deploy anytime the sensor in the front end detected a significant impact to the front end. I guess I don't see what difference it makes if you are decelerating or not, any impact should deploy the air bag.

What the hell good is it if I fall asleep with the cruise set on 75 and slam into an overpass?? Since I'm asleep, obviously I'm not hitting the brake to slow my impact, therefore the bag won't keep my face out of the wheel.

HEMI_OFF_ROAD -- sorry, but I just don't buy your theory. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I've never heard that and don't believe it.

 

HEMI_OFF_ROAD is correct all auto airbags are built with a sensor that receives information from an accelerometer built into a microchip. The logic in the chip basically makes the decision on weather or not to deploy the airbag. Of course most systems are not wholly computer dependant and can be deployed by a mass shift that closes an electrical contact. So your both right In the case of this accident the accelerometer did not trigger the airabag and neither was the damage so great as to close the contact by force.

Also remember in your overpass example you don't need to put your foot on the brake to slow down, the overpass will decelerate you all by itself