Posted by MrGutWrench on October 27, 2001 at 19:16:50:

In Reply to: Air Bags posted by FREDJR on October 27, 2001 at 13:53:08:

Most people read both BBS's, but, for those who don't, I've clipped my response from the RN board.
In summary, it's easy to say "Wow, that was incident -- the air bag SHOULD have gone off, but maybe it shouldn't have...
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OK, I've never worked on Land Rover air bag systems and I don't know specifics about how they're designed, BUT I do know a good bit about US airbag systems and I expect Land Rover is similar (components are made by TRW) --
There are lots of different "70 mph headon collisions". Air bag systems (in general) are designed to sense those collisions that really need the air bags to be deployed and then -- AND ONLY THEN -- deploy the bags.
(For one example, let's say that a vehicle gets banged at 70mph and knocked off the road and into a tree. If that first collision doesn't meet the deceleration criteria to set the bag off, then the bag will still be available when the vehicle hits the tree. That's the way that it SHOULD be -- air bags are only good for about 1/8th of a second - you don't want the things out for a slight bump and then gone when you hit the tree!)
I know that you're all emotional about this (and that's understandable), but if you want my guess, it's that the air bags didn't deploy due to the simple engineering and design reasons because they shouldn't have.
Good luck, MrG mrgutwrench@atTEA.net (to email, change "atTEA" to "att")
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