> > I'm skeptical of this story, but I don't know much about airbag systems.
> > Has anyone heard of this happening? Does it even make any sense? > >
> > -------------------------
> > My brother was recently in a car accident and was lucky not to be hurt. I
> > went with him when he took the car to the body shop and learned some
> > valuable safety information. Just after we arrived, someone drove in a > car,
> > that was not badly damaged, however the air bags had deployed. The manager
> > of the body shop informed the driver that you should NEVER drive a car > after
> > airbags have deployed, no matter how slight the damage to the car seems. > He
> > told us that many car airbags have 2 deployments, one fast and one slow. > If
> > your airbag had a slow deployment, the fast mechanism may still be > "loaded"
> > and could deploy without warning depending on the damage to your car. > >
> > It may seem obvious not to drive a damaged car with a deployed airbag
> > however I thought this was a good safety learning about deployed bags in
> > cars with minor damage.
>
> BULLSHIT. Airbags only have enough chemical to inflate once. This idiot
> has no idea what he is talking about. The deployment speed is calculated by
> the onboard computer instantaneously calculated by g=forces, impact speed
> and other criteria.
>
Once they go off that's it, However if the vehicle is equipped with multistage air bags, the processor determines the severity of the impact and the proper level of deployment. The conventional air bags used a solid fuel pellet design, the new multistage air bags uses a canister with highly compressed gas. These air bags have 2 squibs and they can be timed to ignite at up to 3 different stages from what Im told. The timing depends on the severity of the impact. They are low, medium and full deployment.
Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech