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 according tocrash severity. Your vehicle has electronic frontalsensors, which help the sensing system distinguishbetween a moderate frontal impact and a moresevere frontal impact. For moderate frontal impacts,these airbags inflate at a level less than fulldeployment. For more severe frontal impacts, fulldeployment occurs. If the front of your vehicle goesstraight into a wall that does not move or deform,the threshold level for the reduced deployment isabout 12 to 15 mph (19 to 24 km/h), and thethreshold level for a full deployment is about16 to 23 mph (26 to 37 km/h). The threshold levelcan vary, however, with specific vehicle design, sothat it can be somewhat 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.70
