If youre on a head on collision going about over 45mph and you hit a deer shouldnt your airbags go off?

Question

I drive a toyota camry and i was in an accident like 2 days ago. I hit a deer and my hood bumper and grill were damged. I was alittle over 45 and my airbags didnt deploy. It couldve been worse!!! Right my airbags should have deployed or no???

Answer 1

Airbags are designed to deploy only when they might be needed to prevent serious injury. In order for airbags to be effective they must deploy early in a crash; in a frontal crash this typically occurs within the first 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds).



A vehicle's airbag control module relies on feedback from crash sensors to predict whether an event is severe enough to warrant an airbag deployment.



Institute researchers estimated that 1-2 percent of front occupant deaths represented potential system failures where deployment would have been expected.



Some of these deaths could not have been prevented by deployed airbags so in my opinion yes they should have deployed.........

Answer 2

No. Airbags must NEVER deploy MERELY because you where going a specific speed and hit something. If they always did so, they would be extremely dangerous, and probably illegal. Airbags must be designed so that they only deploy if the angle of impact, rate of deceleration of the vehicle, and certain other factors are such that the accident is likely to cause a more severe injury to the person (not the car) than the airbag deployment could cause, and are such that the airbag is likely to prevent the injury.



Because a deer is pushed forward or up, and the car is able to continue moving forward, at least for a short distant, it does not decelerate quickly enough to cause an airbag deployment.

Answer 3

My wife just hit a deer at 60 MPH the other day and the air bags did not go off.



However, the seat belt pretensioners did go off on both front seat belts which means that they have to be replaced. The way it was described to me by the Body Shop Manager and GM is that the car did not decelerate (ie. come to a complete stop) hard enough to trigger the air bags. If the deer had been an immovable object the air bags would have deployed. Same in your case; the vehicle structure was able to absorb enough of the impact to negate the necessity of the air bags to deploy.



My car is a low mileage 2006 Malibu Maxx. With the amount of body damage they almost wrote the car off with a large amount of the claim being $1000.00 just for front seat belts. If the air bags had deployed the replacement cost would have been great enough to write off the entire vehicle.

Answer 4

Airbags are designed to reduce the chances of injury or death in a major accident, not very minor accidents. An Airbag can actually do more harm than good in a minor collision. If an accident has little to no risk of injury or death, an airbag deployment can cause more bodily injury than the accident that deployed them. That's why airbags are not designed to go off in every car accident. You are alive, breathing and talking to us, aren't you? If you are, the car's safety systems probably did just what they were intended to do.

Answer 5

The sensors are behind the bumpers, so the bumpers have to be pushed in to trigger the front airbags. In your case, it sound like the collision with the deer was primarily above the bumper, which would explain why they didn't go off.

Answer 6

I thought both sensors had to be hit, not just one. If that is the case then no they wouldn't go off, because you wouldn't have hit both at the same time when you hit a deer.

Answer 7

Must have missed the sensor other wise it would of went off.