Advice please re query airbag failure.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

nobbysn*ts wrote: »

No, it's serious enough. It's one of the injuries air bags are designed to avoid, so if the op has an accident that broke the sternum, it failed.

I don't disagree it would be better not to have the injury, and it may be that the airbag might have avoided that injury. Essentially the concern about broken sternums is that it is an indication of a heavy impact and therefore it is an indicator that other damage would be possible (essentially the injuries Princess Dianna circummed to).

However, it is not a given that the airbag failed even with the injury having been received. It is quite possible that the airbag was designed not to deploy in the circumstances. My point is that there are serious consequences to having been airbagged, and the fact that an injury was received is not necessarily a sign of failure.

The car may have some information recorded that would explain what happened, it may not.

Basically, if the OP goes down a no win no fee route, they may get something for their troubles. What would they get? Broken sternum in his case has turned out not to be a serious injury so you have what in the grand scheme of things is a minor injury, a bit of pain, so there is not big money. The manufacturer may pay up just to avoid the costs which are bound to be much higher than any likely settlement, or they may decide they need to defend because of setting a precedent.

To go to court, to make a case you would need an expert to testify as to the speed of impact and then you would need an expert to testify that the airbag should have gone off in those particular circumstances, that there were no maintenance issues and then you would need another expert to testify that the likely injuries with an airbag would be less than without. So to go to court, a lawyer would be looking at several thousand pounds in expert witness fees and lawyer fees, and the manufacturer would probably still be able to counter that with their own testimony.

The OP is welcome to take a punt and see what they might get with a personal injury vulture.

Myself, I think if all I had was some bruising and what is actually a minor fracture in retrospect (that is not to say it wouldn't be painful, but as a veteran of 7 broken bones, I'm a bit blase about broken bones and they don't count as serious injuries in my book, it is what else might have been damaged), I'd be glad that the airbag did not deploy, with the potential for permanent hearing loss and other injuries. Being airbagged is not a walk in the park.

PintAndAPie

nobbysn*ts wrote: »

No, it's serious enough. It's one of the injuries air bags are designed to avoid, so if the op has an accident that broke the sternum, it failed.

No manufacturer of a safety system will ever state that a certain injury will not occur if the safety system is deployed. The aim is that the likelihood or severity of injury is reduced. Or perhaps you have a Wiki article that states differently.

photome

nobbysn*ts wrote: »

The car's only 204 inches bumper to bumper.

So what is afew inches in your book

I just measured how far I sit from airbag.

18 inches to tip of my nose, 22 inches to my forehead.

A few inches to me is less than a foot, which is too close

colino

If it was indeed a head-on collision it would have been well within the, "crash zone" for, at least the drivers, airbag to fire. Was the airbag system light working properly? It will be easy enough to check if the system was properly active as the ecu can be checked in a few seconds. Do remember though that the airbag systems we have are SRS, not the originals designed for forgetful, fat Americans to bounce off of when they crashed without their seatbelts. Remember too that your seatbelt has to be properly fitted. I've been in a couple of nasty, high speed accidents (neither of them my fault!) and with the seatbelt alone, came nowhere near touching the steering wheel and got nothing more than a temporary, diagonal "burn" from the belt.
I doubt very much if you will get any further with this.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

colino wrote: »

If it was indeed a head-on collision it would have been well within the, "crash zone" for, at least the drivers, airbag to fire.

Not knowing how sophisticated a system it has, but potentially there are a number of tests that the system has to get through before the airbag will fire, the major one being the rate of deceleration rather than the absolute speed of the accident. We don't know what the vehicle had to get through to hit the tree, we don't know how sturdy the tree was, and we don't know where the car impacted the tree, we don't know the angle of impact.

For example, if the car hit the tree head on but offset, then rather than hitting with the engine, the wing could be substantially deformed well back towards the windscreen. This would create a dramatic looking damage, but would lead to a lower deceleration crumpling the wing, and the front suspension rather than a central frontal impact essentially decelerated by the engine block.

The point is made by various sites that explain airbags pointing out that although they are tested to fire against a concrete block at say 18mph, in a crash against a crash barrier (which deforms) the firing speed can be doubled.

We don't even know the original speed, although the OP poster says 35mph, as he was in the middle of a coughing fit, I would hope he had at least lifted off the accelerator and I would assume that was the speed he last noticed (and actual speed would typically be lower than indicated).

In Googling around, it was interesting to find an old study in the BMJ (old enough that I'd expect airbag technology to have improved and reduced the negative effects) that suggested that airbags made no difference to the number of severe chest injuries (they reduced head and neck and increased limb injuries).