Honda Jazz airbag recall and crash

AdrianC

securityguy wrote: »

AdrianC wrote:

Indeed. 100mph head-on impact with a van

Indeed. A quick back of the fag packet calculation says that such an accident dissipates about 0.5MJ and exposes the occupants to at least 10g for more than 100ms. That's a vast amount of energy, and for someone who isn't wearing a HANS device and isn't in a six point harness to get away with that with only chest pain is what most people would think of as a miracle, or at the very least a testament to good engineering, good design and the wonders of finite element analysis. I remember in the 1990s, when I hung around the HPC community, being amazed at just how much computing power was being used by car manufacturers to model impacts so they could design monocoque cars which would collapse progressively so as to keep the deceleration survivable.

But not, sadly, the OP, who thinks that anything less than walking away completely uninjured from a high-energy, high-speed accident shows that Honda must be at fault. The word is "ungrateful". The compensation culture in this country is absolutely shocking.

OP, you had a massive, high energy accident. The monocoque of the car was perfectly designed to be sacrificed progressively to lengthen the deceleration pulse so that your brain didn't smash against your skull and your heart and liver stayed away from your ribcage. The airbags functioned perfectly and kept your head away from the steering wheel and the windscreen and, probably, your knees away from the structure of the car too. The pedal box collapsed so that whoever was driving didn't have their ankles broken. The seatbelt pre-tensioners kept you away from the sides of the car. All those engineers, doing their job.

And all you want to do is whine about how it was dusty and noisy and your chest hurt and can I sue Honda for doing their job so well. Your car saved your life. That was great. Stop whinging.

And, for some contextual illustration...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJjUmZKNtbs

lorryw

Can I respectfully suggest "securityguy" that you actually read my post.
At no time have I mentioned compensation!
I find the comments about my whining or being ungrateful that I am alive deeply upsetting and unkind.

AdrianC

lorryw wrote: »

At no time have I mentioned compensation!

So what possible purpose would there be in contacting Honda?

facade

Jogging Honda into getting their finger out and replacing these recalled inflators?

My Nissan had a new drivers one fitted last year, but as posted already it was because it might fill the cabin with a hailstorm of shrapnel on deployment, not because the airbag wouldn't inflate.

Sensational news story #1
http://blog.caranddriver.com/massive-takata-airbag-recall-everything-you-need-to-know-including-full-list-of-affected-vehicles/

Sensational news story #2
http://jalopnik.com/truckload-of-airbag-parts-explodes-en-route-to-takata-p-1785826917

Plenty more on Google

AdrianC

facade wrote: »

Jogging Honda into getting their finger out and replacing these recalled inflators?

They've been recalling them for three years now, and are doing the work as fast as they can.

Sensational news story #2
http://jalopnik.com/truckload-of-airbag-parts-explodes-en-route-to-takata-p-1785826917

That was propellant for new airbags, unaffected by the recall, being taken to the factory for assembly. It's very likely slowed the recall down.

securityguy

AdrianC wrote: »

And, for some contextual illustration...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJjUmZKNtbs

The part that's impressive about that is that the airbags have made it to the passengers before the passengers have even taken up the slack in their seatbelts. That's a real testament to the crumple zone doing its job (so that as the bonnet and engine are deforming the passengers aren't experiencing the full deceleration there would otherwise be) and the rapidity of deployment of the airbags. There's no time scale on the slow-mo, but if the initial velocity is 64km/h then the metre or so of the bonnet is eaten up in a little over 50 milliseconds, in which time the airbag control unit has taken the decision to fire and has the bags up and inflated. By the time car the starts decelerating substantially (ie, the passengers start to move against their seat belts and their heads start to move forward) the bags are already up and keeping them away from the structure and, presumably, the seatbelt pre-tensioers have fired in the same window.

securityguy

lorryw wrote: »

Can I respectfully suggest "securityguy" that you actually read my post.
At no time have I mentioned compensation!
I find the comments about my whining or being ungrateful that I am alive deeply upsetting and unkind.

You asked "Should airbags burst".

Your airbags didn't burst. They did their job. What would you write to Honda about? "Dear Honda, my airbags worked well, so I can write this letter?"

Roll you question back. It's not "should airbags burst?" it's "did my airbags burst?", to which the answer is "No".

The initiator, about which there is a recall, isn't the bag, and clearly worked perfectly in your case as (a) your bags did their job and (b) the cabin wasn't full of shrapnel. What do you want Honda to do? What do you think your experience has to do with a recall regarding a rare (but nonetheless serious) occurrence which your car didn't suffer from? We know your car's initiator wasn't at fault, because when your airbags fired (correctly) and deployed (correctly) the initiator did its job perfectly. What do you write? "Dear Honda, my car worked perfectly, but I'm worried that...what?"

thescouselander

Airbags do deflate quickly. I was in a taxi that crashed once. Basically the driver nodded off and hit a pedestrian refuge island before the car was deflected off the side of the road through the window of a greasy spoon. The problem was the airbags deployed when we hit the island but had deflated by the time we hit the shop which was a massive crash.

Luckily we all walked away but on that occasion the airbags were useless.

AdrianC

thescouselander wrote: »

Airbags do deflate quickly. I was in a taxi that crashed once. Basically the driver nodded off and hit a pedestrian refuge island before the car was deflected off the side of the road through the window of a greasy spoon. The problem was the airbags deployed when we hit the island but had deflated by the time we hit the shop which was a massive crash.

Luckily we all walked away but on that occasion the airbags were useless.

They can never be predictive. They can't look at the impact that's just happened, then look ahead in time and try and figure out if there's going to be a bigger, harder impact ahead.

All they can do is go "Oooh! An impact! <BOOM>" and cross their little fingers that there won't be another one.

facade

They are supposed to deflate very quickly after they do their job, (they have holes in to let the gas out at a controlled rate) otherwise you might suffocate/choke on your own vomit/become hysterical and injure yourself/not be able to run away from the blazing wreck etc.

Airbags, like seatbelts and crumple zones only work once, so in multiple impacts where the car doesn't come to rest after the first, you are in trouble. They were designed to reduce fatalities, and as most fatal crashes involved one serious impact, that is what they were made to do.