Labop

Funny you ask about air bags...,

Airbags don't usually care about the speed of the vehicle, it's really the G forces induced. Like the collision force equivilent to hitting a wall/object at 10-15 MPH. The airbags sensors are accelerometers..., basically G-force detectors. They determine the direction and force of an impact. So if you are hit head on (as my wife was, see below) the front airbags go off, if on the side only the sides go off. If you're hit at an angle between front/side, both might go off, depends on the car.

What I'm saying there, is that it shouldn't matter what speed the computer thinks you're going, it only matters what the force is that the airbag sensors detect.

My wife's story:

Two days ago my wife was heading home from work in her '00 VW Bug..., some chick darted out right in front of her, Lissa slammed on the breaks. No idea what the final impact speed was, but she had been doing between 35-40. ABS worked great..., so did the airbags. The other driver froze up, if she'd kept on the gas my wife would have cleared her. Instead Lissa slammed into them. Cop gave the other girl a citation for crossing oncoming traffic or something. My wife is OK, her ankle hurts a bit from getting slammed around, and both her wrists are sprained from the airbag.

The Bug is a total write off and she's missed 1 & 1/2 days of work so far. My wife's pretty freaked out right now. The trip downtown to the wrecking yard to take pics was rough cause she was skittish about every freaking-idiot-driver that merged w/o blinkers... . At the time, I was a bit unsympathetic as I had just driven from Orlando (7 hours), with all sorts of idiots cutting me off all day...There are A LOT of idiot drivers on the roads right now. But she is OK, hopefully she'll feel better after Christmas.

Pics to follow, once I find the right USB cable..., damned mini USB port. The bug did really well protecting her, we're probably getting her another one.

RX Renesis

that bug is probally one of the best at crashing head on and read end due to it's dome design...

beachdog

The side of your car slid sideways into the SIDE of the 18 wheeler's tires?

Or

The side of your car slid sideways into the REAR of the 18 wheelers tires?

The truck was also travelling at 70 MPH?

While the impact and damage were probably pretty dramatic, if you were both travelling in the same direction, the g forces were probably not high enough to trigger the bags. Plus, you ran into the tires which absorbed some of the energy of the impact.

Labop

beachdog hit it on the head there. if you were both traveling at similar velocity, the force wouldn't have been high enough. Still enough mass to do quite a bit of damage I guess. Do you have pics? Good to hear your OK as well.

black-rx8-msbodykit

iTrader: (-1)

it will be suck more if the air bag come out, then you have to pay extra money to fix it