
Always wear your seat belt and make sure everyone in the vehicle is wearing theirs.Īlways have your seat belts inspected after an accident to determine if the pretensioners were deployed (even if the air bags didn’t go off). Never attempt to replace an air bag on your own. If an air bag has been deployed, it must be replaced. The thin nylon airbag gets an immediate injection of hot nitrogen gas, which makes it expand so quickly that it forces it out from the dashboard at about 160 mph (257 km/h). An airbag inflates almost instantly, in as little as 20 milliseconds, after a crash. Some angled front impacts may not set off any air bags. Though airbags can save lives, they can be dangerous for babies and young children. The front air bags may inflate if your car strikes something severely with the undercarriage. The side curtain air bags should deploy in a rollover situation. Side and side curtain air bags only deploy in some side impact situations (the collision has to have sufficient force to trigger the system). It also won’t inflate if the passenger is not adult sized (a child, for instance).

If there isn’t a passenger sitting in the front seat, the passenger front air bag will not inflate. In some larger vehicles, they may also extend to offer protection to third-row passengers. In most cars, curtain airbags cover both the front and rear seats. In this way, they are more critical than torso airbags, designed to protect your head above anything else. Have your belts inspected after every collision. Curtain airbags deploy from your vehicle’s ceiling. If you’re driving slower than this, the air bags will not inflate.Įven if the air bags are not inflated, it’s possible that your seat belt pretensioners will be activated. You must be going faster than 12 – 18 MPH for any air bag to deploy.


There are a couple of other things that you should know here, as well: The computer then determines if the criteria warrant deploying the air bags. The sensors read the severity and location of an impact and then send that information to the computer. Your air bag system is monitored and controlled by the computer and a network of sensors. Some aren’t severe enough to warrant it, while in other situations, deploying the air bags might actually cause injury if someone isn’t properly seated in the car. While it might seem like your air bags should deploy during every accident, that’s actually not the case.
