The responsibility for replacing a counterfeit air bag will vary depending on the circumstances around the original installation of the part. If you are concerned and have an air bag that was replaced at a repair shop recommended by your insurance company, we recommend that you contact your insurance company. You may also wish to contact your local Consumer Protection Agency or the appropriate State Office of the Attorney General to determine your rights under the law, and the Better Business Bureau or the Federal Trade Commission to file a complaint.
There are few circumstances under which the risk of sitting in front of an active frontal air bag outweigh the safety benefits. Authorization will be granted under the following four circumstances:.
The approval process for deactivation is more rigorous because, while an ON-OFF switch allows the driver or passenger frontal air bag to be turned on and off in appropriate circumstances, deactivation is not so flexible.
Once deactivated, an air bag cannot be easily activated for those drivers or passengers who may need it. If you are interested in having an air bag ON-OFF switch installed in a vehicle you own or lease check with the leasing company first to see if installing an ON-OFF switch would violate the terms of your lease , you will need to:. The activation of an air bag in a crash is dependent on several important factors including: the characteristics of the crash e.
Air bags are not intended to deploy in all crashes. There may be circumstances when an air bag does not deploy. Some possible examples follow:.
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. Placing a child in the front seat, no matter what the circumstances, comes with increased risk.
NHTSA recommends that children under 13 years old ride in the back seat in the appropriate child restraint systems for their age and size: rear-facing car seats, forward-facing car seats, booster seats, or adult seat belts. For information on tweens, see our Seat Belts section. The proper operation of some advanced frontal air bag systems is highly dependent on the pressure also known as "loading" placed on the seat bottom by the driver or passenger.
Situations that add or subtract sensed weight can result in an occupant misclassification. Once deployed, an air bag — whether advanced frontal or another type — cannot be re-used and must be replaced by an authorized service technician without delay.
All light vehicles passenger cars and light-duty trucks must meet specific safety performance criteria for dummies representing month-old infants, 3-year-old toddlers, 6-year-old children, and small-stature women. For those manufacturers electing to suppress not deploy an air bag for an infant or child in all crashes, the occupant-sensing devices in their advanced frontal air bag systems have been tested with child-sized dummies, representing an infant in a child safety seat and small children in and out of child safety seats, to ensure that the air bag will turn itself off.
To minimize the potential of any air-bag-related injury, NHTSA still recommends keeping a inch minimum between the air bag cover in the center of the steering wheel for drivers and on the dashboard for the right front passenger , maintaining a proper seating position, and moving the seat as far back as possible drivers should be able to comfortably reach the pedals. Frontal air bags have come a long way since they first appeared in the s. Although those older air bags saved thousands of lives, they deployed the same way for every driver and passenger, causing injury and in some rare cases even death to children, small adults, and any unbelted occupants positioned too close to the air bag as it deployed.
Today's advanced frontal air bags are better able to protect drivers and front seat passengers by using sophisticated sensing systems to determine whether, when and how much to deploy. This included phasing and prioritizing when the replacement parts are required to be available to consumers since it was not possible for all of the replacement parts to be available right away and some vehicles were at much higher risk of a dangerous air bag explosion than others.
Skip to main content. Here are some reasons to help you understand why your airbag may not have deployed. Crash conditions may have been sufficiently moderate where an airbag would not be needed to protect an occupant wearing a seat belt.
The seat belt may provide sufficient protection from a head or chest injury in such a crash. The type of crash that occurs is a major factor in whether or not airbags deploy. For example, frontal airbag deployment should be expected in moderate to severe impacts to the front bumper or front corners of your vehicle.
Depending on where your vehicle was struck, airbag sensors may not have been triggered. This can happen when frontal airbags do not fire in certain types of rollover collisions, or during side or rear impact crashes. As with any other car part, it is possible for airbag sensors to fail to correctly detect impact or deploy the airbag, as the result of improper design, testing or installation of sensors, or because of software failure.
Defective electrical components or severed wiring can interfere with the impact signal communication between sensors and airbags. This is often found to be the cause when one airbag fails to deploy even when the other one functions properly. The front airbag is contained in the steering wheel, with a secondary dash panel bag on the passenger side above the glove box. Side airbags are located in the headliner on either side of the passenger compartment.
The intent of these devices is to mitigate the impact of a sidewards movement in a crash. Knee airbags can be carried under the passenger glove box, and also under the back of the front seats. The intent is to limit knee impact in the event of an accident. Rear curtain airbags are designed to drop down behind the rear passenger compartment, to primarily cushion the impact of a rear-end collision. Regardless of the make of the car, or position of the device, airbags typically extend between 10 to 25 milliseconds after collision.
0コメント