When Should an Airbag Inflate?The driver’s and right front passenger’s frontal airbagsare designed to inflate in moderate to severe frontalor near-frontal crashes. But they are designed to inflateonly if the impact exceeds a predetermined deploymentthreshold. Deployment thresholds take into accounta variety of desired deployment and non-deploymentevents and are used to predict how severe a crashis likely to be in time for the airbags to inflate and helprestrain the occupants. Whether your frontal airbagswill or should deploy is not based on how fast yourvehicle is traveling. It depends largely on what you hit,the direction of the impact and how quickly yourvehicle slows down.In addition, your vehicle has “dual stage” frontal airbags,which adjust the restraint according to crash severity.Your vehicle is equipped with an electronic frontalsensor, which helps the sensing system distinguishbetween a moderate frontal impact and a more severefrontal impact. For moderate frontal impacts, theseairbags inflate at a level less than full deployment.For more severe frontal impacts, full deployment occurs.If the front of your vehicle goes straight into a wall thatdoes not move or deform, the threshold level for thereduced deployment is about 12 to 16 mph (19 to26 km/h), and the threshold level for a full deployment isabout 18 to 24 mph (29 to 38.5 km/h). (The thresholdlevel can vary, however, with specific vehicle design,so that it can be somewhat above or below this range.)Airbags may inflate at different crash speeds.For example:• If the vehicle hits a stationary object, the airbagcould inflate at a different crash speed than ifthe object were moving.• If the object deforms, the airbag could inflate at adifferent crash speed than if the object does notdeform.• If the vehicle hits a narrow object (like a pole) theairbag could inflate at a different crash speedthan if the vehicle hits a wide object (like a wall).• If the vehicle goes into an object at an angle theairbag could inflate at a different crash speedthan if the vehicle goes straight into the object.The frontal airbags (driver and right front passenger)are not intended to inflate during vehicle rollovers, rearimpacts, or in many side impacts because inflationwould not likely help the occupants.1-54
