On my way home from work today I hit a deer on my road while traveling at about 55 MPH or so. My hood and front bumper are both smashed to hell., as I hit the deer square in the center of my car. What concerns me is that with the speed I was traveling and the damage to my car, my airbags should have deployed. Is this something I should contact my local Scion dealership about? Would contacting a lawyer about a lawsuit be something I could possibly do? Thanks in advance for any help/information.

 

not sure but post pics hehe sorry i like carnage

 

airbags deploy if the bar is crack it causes a electrical spark that causes the airbag to shoot out.. if the bar didnt break a lawsuit wouldnt be smart.. if it did and the airbag didnt deploy yes a lawsuit would be good .. get ur bar check to see if it did crack .. go to a shop and ask if the bar broke and should the airbag have deployed

 

im guessing because the sensors for the airbags are sensitive to how quick you DEcelerate not if you just smack a dear and keep on driving..although that is a pretty big smack! =o)

 

there are usually sensors in most cars for the airbags that cover multiple zones. usually more than one zone has to be activated for the airbags to deploy.

 

Airbags are determined by the rate of speed & how fast it takes you to stop not by the type of accident.

 

lawsuit? whys everyone think "sue, sue" now a days? were you horribly injured? who ya gonna sue, the deer? i wouldnt wana try and sue a businuss like toyota unless i had a rock hard case, they prolly have the best lawyers money can buy, toyotas ridicoulesly rich, they can afford to cloan johnny cockran to put it to your ___!

 

Hitting a deer wont stop you. You didnt hit it hard enough to get the proper impact load to set them off. Remeber a large deer is still only a few hundred pounds. Air bags are made for hitting cars which are easily 10x heavier even for small cars.

 

YES...contact a lawyer as soon as possible!!......lots of sarcasm in case you weren't aware.

Had the airbags gone off you'd be looking at another grand, on top of current repairs, to replace them...

 

so if i'm stopped at a stop light and someone hits me head on from the other lane by running the light...my airbags won't deploy? that doesn't make sense

what about if i'm stopped and someone re-ends me?

 

Yea, Ummmm....we're not looking at the extra money it would cost to fix our car, but maybe the extra money to fix our faces had an accident been worse. If there's a defect in the deployment mechanism of the airbags, such as the sunroof, hatch rattles, etc...... Damn, I'd like to be privy to it. Makes sense huh? In a world where suing someone for pinching our girlfriends ___ is considered normal....this topic seems totally relevant.

 

Yes they will because of the high impact force. As for being rear ended probably not. I dont think they have the sensors in the back.

 

Airbags deploy only when the sensor says it has to. If the bags did deploy, the force of the airbag on your body will be worse and may cause serious damage to you.

 

I believe there are sensors in the back, almost positive... any other dealers to confirm this?

 

There shouldn't be. If you are rear ended you are pushed back into the seat instead of pushed forward toward the steering wheel. So deploying the airbag when being hit from behind does you no good.

 

There are no sensors in the back. Sensors in the back would mean airbags in the seat, which would basically blast you into the winshield. The sensors are in the front. It takes a hit to the front exceeding 35 miles per hour for them to deply. Hitting the brakes before hand has nothing to do with deployment, only seatbelt tensioners. The deployment should be the same, whether you hit a road sign or a Hummer in the front.

 

post up some pics. that will make it easier to tell.. there are alot of factors that determine if the bags should deploy. speed, rate of decelleration, angle of impact, and on alot of the newer cars, passanger weight and position. You really dont want the bags to go off.. its not a pleasant experience, and in about 60% of cars on the road... it will total out if they do. Basically you have front mounted sensors, the airbags, and a control unit with a discriminating sensor inside. the sensors work together to determine if the bags need to go off. Hitting a deer, I am guessing that you hit it in the legs and the majority of the impact was to the headlights and hood. That would actually help absorb the impact. where as if you hit a solid 3' block wall, all the energy from the collision would be transferred directly to the front rails and into the passanger compartment.

I get to deal with this stuff all day long, but be glad they did not go off. most of the time you will get burns on your arms/face from the bag coming out and the powder they use

 

good god there is a lot of misinformation being spread.

were you injured because the airbags "failed to deploy"?, or would your injuries have been worsened by being blasted by an airbag that caused you to lose control of your vehicle when, in fact, there was no reason for it to deploy?

had it deployed and caused you to lose control of your vehicle you'd be asking "can i sue toyota because my airbag deployed when it didn't need to?"....i was in control of my car after i hit this deer and got socked by the airbag and lost control and drove into a ditch".

what you seem to be deeming as a "malfunction" seems to me to have been figured into the design of the airbag system.

i'd be behind the whole "can i sue" scenario if hitting the deer caused you to lose a few teeth as your face hit the steering wheel. otherwise, it seems to me the airbags functioned as they should. all the questions of what if i had hit a car/tree/wall, etc., are moot. the airbags would have deployed.

 

Jeez....We sure are supposing alot. Well, they wont deploy if you hit a bird, but they will if you hit a water buffalo. ?????? Frontal hit on a deer at 55 mph...airbags should have deployed. Period. People have totalled their cars on body damage alone, not including your windshield and replacing the airbags after hitting a deer. Aside from all this back and forth crap about deceleration and the weight of things your hitting, have the sensors on your airbags checked if possible. This guy who hit the deer might just have a bad sensor and when he does hit something of "weight" and they dont go off...he's screwed. We dont wanna find out about an airbag TSB after a few of us get offed.

 

dude, no disrespect, i think you may be off base. he probably didn't actually hit the deer's "weight". he hit the deer's legs....the deers "weight" must have gone up and over the hood and then over the roof apparently. luckily the deer's "weight" didn't hit the windshield where the airbag deploying would have been of little consequence to our driver's safety....a healthy deer would certainly have been an "airbag unlike any other", had it come through the windshield.

it seems to me, he "knocked" the poor deer's legs out from under it, whereupon it rolled up and over the car. the airbag not deploying in this instance seems fair and appropriate. i certainly don't want the airbag deploying every time i knock some pedestrian to the curb for crossing outside the crosswalk (k, i take that back, if i'm overzealous in "pushing" some "i'm fat so i drive an electric cart" jockey out of the way i expect the bag to blow....but their center of gravity is lower and more in line with the sensors.)

anyway, i'd imagine it was not the sensors' fault, but you may be right, he ought to get it checked.