Lemmings that they are, the MSM are marching in lockstep concerning the braking problems with the Toyota Prius. Have they looked any further? Have they considered the possibility that some Prius models have an airbag deployment problem? Probably not – that would involve journalistic digging.
Here’s a 2004 Prius that was involved in an accident in February 2009. (My neighbor was the driver.)
The driver suffered a broken sternum and heavy bruising from the seat belt. The car was declared a total wreck. Here’s a photo displaying the operation of the airbags:
The airbags didn’t deploy.
The regional distributor of Toyotas was contacted. Their experts examined the vehicle. Their response was that the airbags functioned as designed. The 45 mph impact, they said, came at an angle (right front) that did not activate the airbags. Consequently, the driver’s injuries were in no way their fault.
Here’s what the front of the vehicle looked like.
Has this problem appeared elsewhere? The answer is yes, as noted here and here. Plus, go here and do a search of the word “airbags.”
Is this evidence of a problem? Not necessarily so. But isn’t that a question the MSM should ask?
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42 Comments
Why would the MSM be interested in a real news story? They are too busy hurling vitriolic epitaphs at Sarah Palin ( and other true conservatives) and denigrating the (truly bi-partisan) members of the Tea Party movement.
Wait!!! what was that . . . President Obama is going to speak??? Oh let's go slavishly fawn over the annointed one!!!
Holly cow! Glad the driver will recover from this wreck. A picture is worth a thousand words. It looks like the driver was able to reduce the speed before the impact.
Here is the video crash test with 45 mph. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wg45haoZDg The airbags are supposed to work. What was the speed in the event data recorder? The National Highway Traffic Administration have the equipment to read the recorder. The speed, the g… everything should be in the data – so they can prove their point.
The Prius is the doll baby of the left, the MSM wouldn't print anything that might tarnish it's flawless image as the ecomoblie everyone should be made to drive.
Remember that the air bags are supposed to deploy for a front-end collision, and the specs from the government are pretty specific that they shouldn't deploy for impact from the side. Hard to tell for sure without a picture from above, but from the pictures you have it looks like the car was hit more from the side, and certainly it appears the car is bent to the left. So as a first look, it appears pretty plausible that Toyota is right.
He is such a camera whore!
This is not conclusive of anything wrong with a Prius. Also, airbags are not the puffy soft pillows the TV ads show of them deploying in slow motion. They are fired by pyrotechnics and have killed and hurt people when they go off under the wrong conditions because of the force of their deployment. They are also designed to keep you from being killed in head on collisions, not just any crash.
Do you think government motors is happy with whats happening with Toyota?
Do you think there is more to it???????????????????????
I know this comment is going to get deleted. But when my old man saw that Prius for the first time, he said, "That f-ing car looks like an Edsel had an abortion." Got to to love the old man.
That mainstream state-run media wouldn't have a clue about cars if ya spotted them the C, the R and the S. Any negative press on the Prius runs counter to the "Toyota good, Detroit bad" template they live by.
I'll walk before accepting a ride in a Toyota Deathtrap or a Government Motors vehicle. The same goes for the Hot Wheel's™ unSmart Car.
Kinda takes away from the "unions aren't the problem, it's design and engineering flaws that have driven America's buyers to foreign automakers" mantra, huh? Not building the cars Americans want? Really? Maybe the Big Three were building cars of equal or better quality all along, but were just over-priced in the market compared to the foreign automakers. And why might that be? (Sshh…nobody said "legacy costs", that was just the wind you heard…)
All products manufactured on a "beat the other guy to the punch" timeline are likely to endure defect issues. Toyota is no exception. You can bet that if the Chevy Volt ever makes it into production, there will be a lot of dissatisfied buyers of the first couple model years. Especially if their frozen windmills aren't charging the damned things up! This doesn't excuse faulty design or manufacturing, it's simply a maturation process that can't be fully simulated. (Btw- with global warming science collapsing all around, all that R&D on the first domestic production electric car almost seems -well- a little misguided, now doesn't it?)
It would be nice, however, if the supposed "reporters" could learn some investigative tools and actually ask difficult, or inconvenient questions. I do believe there has been a decided shift in news reporting- designed to not shake things loose without prior "approval" from the money factory. It's important to be on the nice and not naughty list if Christmas bailouts are needed…
I think I've covered pretty much everything that's bothering me- thanks for letting me borrow the megaphone…
are we going to have to bail out Toyota next? pretty soon our government will own ALL the failing auto mfgrs…and they will be just like our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT….BROKE AND RUN BY IDIOTS.
Elli,
I don’t have access to a computer where I can log in so please bare with me.
For the airbags to deploy, the sensors have to be activated, a side hit like this, even though it is a front end impact, can and often do displace the sensors & render them useless. This has been a problem since the beggining of the airbags on all vehicles. The physics of of everything that is involved in an auto crash is mind boggling because it isn’t as simple as 2 bodies with mass striking each other, it is hundreds of thousands of crashes happening at one time.
I can go into great detail about the whole thing, my specialty in Emergency Services was rescue but the jist of my point is that, this is not new or limited to the Prius it effects all vehicles with airbags.
i HAVE A WAREHOUSE FULL OF BEAUTIFUL 1960 AND 1970 FULL SIZED LUXURY AUTOMOBILES, ALL WITH COMFORT SIZE AND LOTS OF STEEL. SOON I WILL START SELLING THEM TO FOLKS THAT CANNOT TRUST ANY OF THE JUNK ON YOUR HIGHWAYS TODAY.
RUFUS LEVIN
JUDGEMANWORLD@AOL.COM
The funny thing about air bags is- speed doesn't necessarily determine when they deploy. Instead, it's air bag deployment requires a combination of speed(or force) and angle of collision. For instance- if you are hit in the side, the air bag in your steering wheel will not deploy no matter how fast the car that hit you was traveling; however, the damage on this car definitely looks like the angle of collision should have caused air bag deployment, especially if the car was traveling 45 miles per hour. Disclaimer- I don't know a whole lot about air bags- but, I was a vehicle body mechanic in the Air Force for 5 years and air bags were part of our required training.
Another thought on this issue is that you want the air bags to deploy in the worst case scenario. In training at GM we were taught that if you hit a deer and your air bag deployed, it would be useless if the vehicle carried on, hitting a tree or concrete barrier.
The more worrisome issue with most foreign air bags is deployment speed, which is usually much higher than American vehicles and cause more severe injury.
Glad your friend is alright.
Hey Muttley,
Re: " . . . hurling vitriolic epitaphs at Sarah Palin " Er, uhm, . . . shouldn't that be *epithets*? Or are you suggesting the MSM is [gleefully] carving her headstone as we speak? Wishful thinking on their part, I would submit.
Timshappywie,
Not true.
Displacement of the crash sensor from side to side or up and down will not deploy the airbag they only are to work in a direct front end hit at 7G’ or greater at an angle of 30 deg. or greater from the front center of the vehicle.
Most sensors are nothing more than a gass filled tube with an electric pad at 1 end and a gold plated steel ball at the other, the prssure of the gass is what keeps the ball from rolling around so if your displacement is less than about 30deg. from center of the vehicle or if the tube gets damage effecting the movement of the ball, you will not have deployment or delayed deployment which causes a whole new set of problems for the occupants of the car.
Just a little note to those who think the pictures posted here show a "side" collision. Not true.
The angle of collision may not have been a perfect zero degrees, but, from looking at both front and side pictures, it is surely as close to head-on as most collisions get. The damage on vehicle's side in the posted profile shot that some people here are apparently confusing with the point of collision is obviously not that at all, but is evidence only of the "buckling" that occurs in the car body in a head-on collision. Modern car bodies are designed specifically to buckle like this, along a "crumple zone," to help absorb and dissipate the energy generated by the forces of the collision, so that the inner structure of the car absorbs much less energy and doesn't transfer that energy to interior objects that would collide with the car's passengers,slamming them with the "energy x mass" that would otherwise injure or kill them. (Continued next)
(Continued from previous comment)
So, to me, this does look like a collision which should have triggered the air bags. Only a more detailed examination of the car and other factors about the incident (speed at collision, etc.) that might be available can say with absolute certainty whether or not the absence of the air bag deployment was according to "correct" design (and, therefore approved by the government safety agency) or represents a failure of design. But, I am quite sure that the argument that this was a "side" collision which shouldn't have triggered the airbags is ceratinly incorrect.
Oddly enough, my brother was in an accident with his Prius about that same time (had to double-check the picture 'cause his car looked just like that). He sprained his thumb because of the force of the airbag deploying. In fact, the new wisdom for hand placement on the steering wheel is 9 and 3 instead of 10 and 2 for this very reason.
Auto safety is a can of worms. Go ahead, dig in!
I bought a used 96' 4Runner that had been center-punched in the front. It required a new radiator, bumper, grill, engine parts, etc. It did not require air bag replacement. How long has this been a problem, for how many models? Since SUV's are evil I would have thought someone would have noted this.
You are so right! You took the words right out of my keyboard!
Remember the good ol' days when people could be thrown out of a car?
As for the sensors, the majority of car manufacturers say that the sensors are self resetting & do not require replacement unless the unit itself "show signs" of damages. basically you shake it & it rattles, if there is any visible signs of damage or if the ohms reading is not with in specs, the unit gets replaced.
How long? Since they started putting airbags in vehicles.
Which vehicles? All airbag equipped vehicles.
Depending on the manufacturer, the vehicle will have between 1 to 3 sensors.
The type of sensors also vary. The most common is the "gas dampened ball and tube" a sealed tube of pressure gas with an electronic pad at 1 end & a gold plated steel ball at the other. Another, the "Rolamite", has a roller in it that trips a switch. A third is the "spring and mass" which contains a weight, spring & a switch & finally the newer models are solid state either containing "micromachined accelerometer" chip or a piezoelectric crystal that sends an electric current the the bag sensor & trips it.
Sorry, but I got side against Archy on this one… .I've been hit from the side and the front of the car (A pontiac Grand Prix i'd owned all of about 7 months) will look EXACTLY like that.. why? Because the other car managed to go around in front of me and ruined the front end of he car
Sorry Archy, but without knowing what the exact accident was your neighbor was in, I gotta side with Toyota.on this one.
Remeber the old days when without a seat belt you would be thrown through the windshield? Thank the Lord she survived at all, a hit like that 30 years ago WITH seat belts would have probably killed her.
It is obvious that this Toyota was hit from the side and this article is nothing more than “piling on” from a story that has been headline news from every MSM Network for the last week. Come on Archy, you can do better than this. Bashing a company for the sake of your neighbor’s “pending lawsuit” should be put under the heading: TORT REFORM FOR THEE BUT NOT FOR ME.
Fatman
First, thank you on your astute post. I really like your website and find it incredibly informative. I like your aptitude of pointing out (by blogging) tiny things that other people don’t take time to mention. I found it while doing an enquiry on Google as a consequence I absolutely will come back here when I have more time.Thanks
That is not 45mph damage, it's more like 20mph
Yeah, I realized I was wrong as soon as I posted the comment and deleted it shortly after. Looks like my deletion didn't come soon enough! It's been a while since I received air bag training- 8 years. It seems I was talking out my asterisk.
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the impact is at the wrong angle in the above photo for a bag deployment impact must be within 30 degrees of centerline with forces projecting into the cabin . so the air bags operated correctly. the broken sternum probably was caused by the seat belt being deployed.
yeah 45 would have sheared the radiator support and probably the front aprons not just bent them.
Ah, good point. I hadn't considered secondary damage.
Amazing! I found this place on yahoo poking around for something else entirely, and now I’m gonna need to read through all the archives
So long free time today, but this was a great find 
I fully agree. My wife worked in the customer service line for a mojor auto manufacturer, and regularly received phone calls from customers who had been in an accident, and expected the airbag to deploy.
The very fact that they were alive to register a complaint demonstrated that the airbag deployment was unneccesary, but the customers had an expectation that the bags should deploy at some specifc speed regardless of the phsics involved in their accident.
I support investigating aigbags when they fail to deploy in an accident involving a fatality, but even then the system may work as designed. Many folk are killed every year in roll-over accidents that slowly disipate the vehicles energy (no airbag deployment). The casue of death? Unbelted passengers flying out of, and landing under the rolling car.
The TV used to imitate GW, with the words "ain't gonna do it". It was reasonably funny for a die hard republican, however it sticks in my craw with the inner feeling that I must never buy a car owned by the the very people who helped rain on the parade. I always bought american…cadillacs…because the japanese would't let us sell our cars there. I also had a mother in law crippled by a low impact accident in a best selling plastic import. Looks like I must buy a German car, they are the only ones that played fair. I'm going to wait a year and sell GM short like goldman sachs and make a bundle, those goverment jerks don't know anything about cars….Ford does, but they still have the unions. I'll be happy if they make it but "ain't going to do it" Very Funny, Prius looks like an abortion from an Edsel…..not people people…it's a joke, repeat, "it's not a baby"!!!!
mis-statement in previous post. I meant I hope ford makes it period. I meant I wasn't going to buy one because of the Union ownership, It is not funny to see any large american company go down the tubes. There are real people and real families involved. I just think that unions (and their conivence to take away American privacy of vote is dispicable as was their 77 bucks an hour. They bought and paid for their socialist president,,,,let um do it without the american people.
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