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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. For moderate frontal impacts,
these airbags inflate at a level less than full
deployment. Your vehicle has electronic frontal
sensors, which help the sensing system distinguish
between a moderate frontal impact and a more
severe frontal impact. 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 12 to 18 mph
(19 to 29 km/h), and the threshold level for
a full deployment is about 18 to 25 mph
(29 to 40.2 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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