Air bag faulty, injury sustained

[BM01]

What is the name of your state? Massachusetts

My 22 year old daughter had a terrible accident which resulted in a totaled car, a new 2005 Hundae Elantra, and she was taken to the hospital with a broken nose, black eyes, much bleeding and bruising. When we spoke to the auto body man he remarked that he was surprised that her air bag did not deploy. He was able to tell us that she did have her seat belt on her.

Should we contact a lawyer? We feel that she may not have sustained the broken nose (by hitting the steering wheel) if the air bag had deployed.

[racer72]

Your daughter does not have a case. No auto manufacturer claims that their supplemental restraint system (airbags to you) will operate in every accident situation, that is plainly spelled out in every owner's manual in every new car. Auto manufacturers also say that the SRS can also cause injuries such as minor burns and facial injuries such as broken noses. The SRS is designed to deploy in specific accident situations, it is apparent your daughter's accident was not one of them. And where do you get this "we" stuff? Your daughter is a legal adult, you have no standing if there was a case.

[BM01]

My daughter is in my home right now, sleeping, after this accident. I did not mean to say "we" even if I feel that she is still my little girl. To be honest with you, I am glad to hear there is no case as I do not like lawsuits and have never been involved in one. I simply wanted to be sure that if there was a problem with the car's airbag, we... I mean, my daughter... would have to do something to get it settled, maybe legally. Thank you for your response.

[chuck943]

I am not a lawyer so I can not give you legal advise but I can give you an idea of how the air bag systems function. In the early stages of air bags in automobiles they used 3 sensors to set off the air bags. These sensors were nothing more than a magnet and a gold plated ball, if 2 of the 3 balls seperated from their magnets during a collision then all the air bags would deploy. In most accidents this would cause actually more damage to the car than the accident. Just to give you an example my wife wrecked her 97 Mercury Tracer, the repairs were $7900, the cost to repair the damage from the accident was only $3600 of the repair bill,the rest of the damage was caused by the air bags deploying(busted windshield,broken dash,cracked steering column,and of course the air bags).
In newer vehicles starting around 2003 models they started using what they refer to as the smart air bag system. These systems use sensors that actually measure G-Force and they will not deploy until a certain amount is reached. It has several stages involved, 1st stage it will only activate the pre-tensioner in the seat belt (this just pulls seat belt tighter doing accident). 2nd stage will also deploy air bag at a slow speed. and 3rd stage will deploy air bag at a very fast speed. All of this depends on how severe of an impact the control module sees. They also have started incorporating what they call an occupant classification sensor in the passenger seat. This sensor can tell if someone is actually sitting in the passenger seat and also tell if they are of small statue such as less than 85 lbs. If no one is sitting in the passenger seat then the passenger air bag will not deploy,if the person in the passenger seat is of small statue and is wearing their seat belt then air bag will not deploy. This is a basic description of how the newer systems work.

[kurapika]

I think there's no need for you to contact a lawyer. After all, it's an accident. Some airbags really don't operate properly the way they should be.


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[puenil]

As stated above, air bags do NOT always go off. Some cars (many) have only ONE sensor. And you have to have a direct hit on that sensor to trigger the air bags. Normally, that sensor is in front of the radiator, in the middle. So, if you have a rear end collision or a side impact (T-Bone) your air bags most likely will not deploy.

** Please understand that not all cars are the same, some have more than one sensor and some have them located in other areas. This is a general rule, not a across the board rule.