Rear ended issues

Airbag is important and potentially dangerous. Also very expensive. If it was mine, I'd take it to a Toyota shop and have them check it out.

Also, you might want to click on the "Report" button at the bottom of your post and see if a moderator will move this from the Prime Technical Discussion to the Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting forum so other Gen 2 owners can lend their expertise.

 

Glad the kid's alright.

Activating an airbag is like activating an ejector seat--you can't put it back where it belongs. Is there a difference in the lights with nothing on the passenger seat and a 100+ pound person sitting in it?

Not wanting to make things any worse I would look around for a loose connector but if the car got hit hard enough to damage a connector I would take it into a shop for a professional opinion--that's what insurance is for and the other driver's insurance company will cover it.

 

So are the lights indicating the air bag is not activated, when someone of adult weight is sitting in the passenger seat? Or when there's nobody in the seat, or a small child? The latter would be normal, the former not.

I'm just thinking: maybe you've just started paying attention to this warning post accident, and misinterpreting? It is normal for the passenger seat air bag to be off in some scenarios.

Apologies if I'm completely off-base.

 

If he was hit why worry about the $500 deductible? It will be paid by one of the insurance companies (depending on how you choose to handle the claim).

Is the goal to just pocket the settlement?

 

AFAIK, there is never a deductible when you get rear ended. It's the other driver's responsibility to make it as close as possible to nothing every having happened, since it wasn't your fault. That said, when our car got shortened by several feet by a tester, the driver and owner didn't have medical liability, so our insurance had to cover my wife's medical bills and we paid quite a bit out of pocket. We could have sued they guy, but it was pretty apparent that that would have been like getting blood from a turnip.

 

Paranoid here, too, at traffic lights. When on the motorcycle, I always kept it in gear and aimed at the slot between lanes and an eagle eye on the mirrors till there were at least three cars stopped behind me.