Front end accident, all airbags went off, car turns on but will not drive or reverse.

I rear-ended a car going about 20-30mph. Thankfully, everyone was okay. There was minor cosmetic damage on my front end and her bumper, but all my airbags deployed.

So I get back in my car and there is an error message that states something along the lines of, "pull over or park in safe spot" on my dashboard. I can't remember the message, but it was something like that. While the car was definitely still on, it would not drive or reverse or go into gear so I had to put it in nutural and the cops pushed me to the side of the road. There was no power steering either. There was also a loud ticking/clicking coming from the hood. Then it was towed.

Will my car not drive or reverse simply because the airbags deployed and it is just like an automatic safety feature that needs to be reset for the car to drive again?

Or

Did something more severe happen to my front end, battery, or internally that will not let it drive?

I called a Toyota mechanic dealer and he said that the car will allow you to drive it with the airbags deployed, however, after talking with 4 other collision mechanics, they stated the opposite and that since the airbags deployed it automatically "shuts off the car from going in gear."

The mechanics at the body shop are also telling me that it is illegal to drive without airbags (which upon research I found it's not, though not safe). They say I need to have them so I'm not sure if they are trying to scam me to get airbags installed when all they really need to do is reset my airbag sensors or something then my car will be able to drive again...

Or is this a more severe under the hood issue causing it not to go in gear and drive? If so, what could the issue be?

Thank you for your time in helping me and anyone else having this issue!

 

Thanks the the responses! The collision place is giving me a free check to see what it is and how much it will cost to repair. SonI might as well go with it plus I'm not being charged to leave it there overnight for at least like 3 or 4 days. Hopefully, they do some kind of sensor or program that reports the diagnosis so that I know of this is more of a transmission issue or just a sensor issue.

 

Thank you for your helpful comment, friend!

My car would turn off and on and all the lights work, turn signals, etc, but it just would not engage to drive or go in motion. I understand that no one has inspected the car so they cant know of further internal damage, but I assume, I could definitely be wrong, there isn't since I was only going maybe 35 max. What other type of internal damage could be done at this collision speed?

So does the power management control ECU cut off the main batteries that power the car to actually drive/move or do these batteries function for other reasons that don't have to do with actually making the car drive/move?

Also, I wonder if a mechanic can run this type of test in their computer and if they get this program code result, if they could actually fix it even though they don't install airbags. Do airbags have to be installed for this car to drive I guess is my technical question? I pretty much have to live with the cards I'm dealt with at the moment and would elect to not get airbags installed for thousands of dollars just to drive my car. So if there is a chance it is drivable by just installing new sensors though not airbags themselves would have to be good for me. Or just resetting the power management control ECU without replacing new sensors would be even better, cost-wise...

I appreciate everyone's comments and help as I'm working through this!