I was rear ended at high rate of speed which caused me to hit the vehicle in front of me. My 2018 LS500 was totaled and airbags did not deploy. Anyone know why they didn’t.

Significant damages

Some damage some bumper and maybe frame damage

 

OOF, sorry for your loss. I hope you, and everyone involved, are OK. So air bags are programmed to only go off if they will actually help reduce the risk of injury. For low speed incidents, when everyone is wearing seat belts, air bags can cause more harm than good. Like if the impact force is small, an airbag will hit you so hard as to cause bruises, or worse. But in higher speed collisions the force of your body moving forward (beyond what seatbelts can do) the air bag will still hurt but overall it will lower your risk of injury. Here's an article explaining a bit better than I can:

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...rbags-feature/

 

Crumple zones would've been what stopped the bags from inflating, front air bags work on the rate of deceleration and you didn't quite get there by the looks of it. The damage on the rear looks so minor in comparison.

 

The pop-up cylinders under the front of the hood are for pedestrian protection. They caused the hood to bend up like it did and probably tend to make the collision look worse than it actually is.
Airbag sensors down low probably didn’t detect much impact.