air bags did not deploy

Yes.

 

Was TSS-P of any help prior to the collision?

Bob Wilson

 

What did you hit? Any pictures?

 

Everyone's ok?

 

Frontal air bags are generally designed to deploy in "moderate to severe" frontal or near-frontal crashes, which are defined as crashes that are equivalent to hitting a solid, fixed barrier at 8 to 14 mph or higher. (This would be equivalent to striking a parked car of similar size at about 16 to 28 mph or higher.)

 

Airbag triggers work from acceleration. The mass, speed and direction of whatever you hit will directly affect the acceleration endured by your car and measured by that sensor.

If you hit a massive wall at 35mph? yes, I'd expect them to trigger. If you (again going 35mph) hit the back of another same-size car going the same direction at 20mph for a relative difference of 15mph? No, I would not expect them to trigger.

Realize, you can get a decent bruise from hitting your own seatbelt at 8mph. Airbags are there to mitigate the really bad situations. You don't want to risk them going off in lesser situations where they may compound the crash or disable a car which is still controllable. This also substantially reigns in repair costs and keeps the insurance premium lower.

 

It’s difficult for anyone here to say for sure.

You might find this information from page 44 of the Owner’s Manual (PDF) helpful:

SRS airbag deployment conditions (SRS front airbags)

• The SRS front airbags will deploy in the event of an impact that exceeds the set threshold level (the level of force corresponding to an approximately 12 - 18 mph [20 - 30 km/h] frontal collision with a fixed wall that does not move or deform).
• However, this threshold velocity will be considerably higher in the following situations:
  • If the vehicle strikes an object, such as a parked vehicle or sign pole, which can move or deform on impact
  • If the vehicle is involved in an underride collision, such as a collision in which the front of the vehicle “underrides”, or goes under, the bed of a truck
• Depending on the type of collision, it is possible that only the seat belt pretensioners will activate.

As far as I know, Toyota does not publish design specifications for their supplemental restraint system (SRS), which on the Prius Prime includes both airbags and seat belt pretensioners. Besides the warnings and explanations in the Owner’s Manual, there is some SRS information in the Repair Manual and New Car Features books, available by subscription to techinfo.toyota.com, but these books are written for service technicians and don’t give enough detail to reverse engineer all aspects of the systems’ performance.

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, Occupant Crash Protection (49 CFR § 571.208) is in many respects a performance specification: it says what is allowed to happen to a test dummy in impact tests under certain conditions, not how those results must be achieved, which is left to the automaker’s discretion. This makes it difficult to support categorical statements that airbags or pretensioners should have deployed in any particular collision, or in all collisions in excess of some particular speed.

Like most modern cars, the Prius Prime has an Event Data Recorder feature (Owner’s Manual, page 11), so the car’s computers should have stored information about the incident. This information might help an expert give more insight into the situation.

 

ouchie! glad you lived to tell the tale.

 

Check out this thread. You can watch the video. This was a 50 or 70 mph crash that did not deploy my airbags. I was going 40 mph he was going 60 or 70 mph. It was the way that the crash happened that caused the car not to deploy any airbags. Also the seat belt had enough hang time to tension itself such that I did not move at all in my seat when I crashed into the guard rail.

2016 Prius Pearl bites the dust. | PriusChat

 

You do not want the airbags to deploy except in extreme cases. The explosion of the airbag into your chest & face can cause moderate injuries.

"While the violent deployment of an airbag is far preferable to enduring a collision without an airbag, there are certain risks and injuries that are commonly caused by the airbag. The propellant used to inflate the bag combusts explosively when the airbag is inflated. This combustion can cause burns to the chest, neck, face, and arms of the occupant. The propellant can also cause respiratory and eye irritation. The force of the airbag deployment will abrade or bruise the skin, and the noise from the deployment can cause hearing loss. According to MedScape, when the occupant has braced themselves against the airbag panel, the deployment can break bones in the hand, wrist and arm."
Chest Injuries From Airbags | Healthy Living

You know how some drivers have both hands at the top of the wheel and their arms hang down from there? In case of a crash and airbag deployment they'll get two broken arms from the airbag.