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When Should an Airbag Inflate?
The driver’s and right front passenger’s frontal
airbags are designed to inflate in moderate to
severe frontal or near-frontal crashes. But they are
designed to inflate only if the impact exceeds a
predetermined deployment threshold. Deployment
thresholds take into account a variety of desired
deployment and non-deployment events and are
used to predict how severe a crash is likely to be in
time for the airbags to inflate and help restrain the
occupants. Whether your frontal airbags will or
should deploy is not based on how fast your vehicle
is traveling. It depends largely on what you hit, the
direction of the impact and how quickly your vehicle
slows down.
In addition, your vehicle has “dual stage” frontal
airbags, which adjust the restraint according to
crash severity. Your vehicle has electronic frontal
sensors, which help the sensing system distinguish
between a moderate frontal impact and a more
severe frontal impact. For moderate frontal impacts,
these airbags inflate at a level less than full
deployment. For more severe frontal impacts, full
deployment occurs. If the front of your vehicle goes
straight into a wall that does not move or deform,
the threshold level for the reduced deployment
is about 9 to 16 mph (14 to 26 km/h), and the
threshold level for a full deployment is about
18 to 25 mph (29 to 40 km/h). The threshold level
can vary, however, with specific vehicle design, so
that it can be somewhat above or below this range.
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