When Should an Airbag Inflate?The driver’s and right front passenger’s frontalairbags are designed to inflate in moderate tosevere frontal or near-frontal crashes. But they aredesigned to inflate only if the impact exceeds apredetermined deployment threshold. Deploymentthresholds take into account a variety of desireddeployment and non-deployment events and areused to predict how severe a crash is likely to be intime for the airbags to inflate and help restrain theoccupants. Whether your frontal airbags will orshould deploy is not based on how fast your vehicleis traveling. It depends largely on what you hit, thedirection of the impact, and how quickly yourvehicle slows down.In addition, your vehicle has “dual stage” frontalairbags, which adjust the restraint accordingto crash severity. Your vehicle has an electronicfrontal sensor, which helps the sensing systemdistinguish between a moderate frontal impactand a more severe frontal impact. For moderatefrontal impacts, these airbags inflate at a levelless than full deployment. For more severefrontal impacts, full deployment occurs.If the front of your vehicle goes straight into a wallthat does not move or deform, the thresholdlevel for the reduced deployment is about 12 to16 mph (19 to 26 km/h), and the threshold level fora full deployment is about 18 to 24 mph (29 to38.5 km/h). The threshold level can vary, however,with specific vehicle design, so that it can besomewhat above or below this range.Frontal airbags may inflate at different crashspeeds. For example:• If the vehicle hits a stationary object, theairbags could inflate at a different crash speedthan if the vehicle hits a moving object.• If the vehicle hits an object that deforms, theairbags could inflate at a different crashspeed than if the vehicle hits an object thatdoes not deform.• If the vehicle hits a narrow object (like a pole),the airbags could inflate at a different crashspeed than if the vehicle hits a wide object(like a wall).• If the vehicle goes into an object at an angle,the airbags could inflate at a different crashspeed than if the vehicle goes straight intothe object.75
