Lexus62

Friday morning a woman t boned the side of my sc430. The airbag did NOT deploy. Very thankful for the steel bars in the door which prevented the door from sitting in my lap. Any other owners experience air bag failure in the sc430 series. Still suffering from injuries sustain in this accident would like to know if other have input on this .. Thanks

mrblister

I would think that the side seat air bags should of deployed. What year is your sc430.

2007sc430

good point....airbags aren't designed to last forever. Also, was your vehicle possibly in a previous accident? The body shop may have not replaced the airbags.

tfischer

Steering wheel and dashboard airbags will only deploy in a frontal crash, not when the car is hit from behind or laterally.
If this car had "side impact airbags" as some do now, then those would have deployed.
As for age, they are designed to remain effective for 10 or 20 years - quite a long time, and test on older cars have shown them to be effective, so I don' think age is the problem here.
Probably the impact was not of the kind to trigger the airbags in this car.

Harold57

I agree with tfischer.

JohnnyCake

Has this model always had side airbags? The OP's model was 2002. Not sure whether that model had side airbags. Also agree with tfisher that side impact should not trigger front airbag.

Also, airbags themselves can cause injuries given the violent way they deploy. So you don't want them to deploy unless you really need them, lest more harm is done than good. It is possible that there was a failure, or its possible that the impact did not reach the level of force to trigger activation.

Every auto manufacturer sets a threshold of the amount of force needed to trigger activation. This could be as high as 18 MPH impact into a concrete barrier, which could be equivalent to a 30 MPH impact with something that was able to give (e.g. another car).

Bottom line, glad the structure of the car did its job and you are OK.

tfischer

Airbags are also very, very expensive to replace; so expensive that they are often stolen from cars, and irreputable repair shops will sometimes say they replaced them after an accident, don't do it and pocket the fee, since it is almost impossible to tell if one is actually in place.
When Mr. Green shows up, there is always a scam nearby.

Bon

The microfiche that I looked at had side airbags from 2002 to present. Included was the US, Korean and Taiwan spec models.

tfischer

Wow! Microfiche? Where did you do that - at the natural history museum?

Bon

. . . so to speak.

Bon

Come to think of it we do have cassette players and they're about as old!!

mandyfig

I had a front end collision and due to speed (low) and the brakes not fully activated, the front airbags did not deploy.

There are parameters that need to be employed before the bags will deploy. Google it.

Some of it will be depending on where the sensors are.

Lexus62

I have a 2002 SC430. The impact was hard enough to deploy the airbags. .Trust me. She ripped my door down to the steel bars. Her vehicle bumper was removed. This year/model has side airbags. Thanks.