The Hidden Dangers of Air Bags and Sun Visors During Car Accidents
You hope your air bags to secure you from injuries throughout an incident. You expect to be able to use your sunlight visor to shield your eyes from the shiny glare of the sunlight. Nonetheless, in some automobiles, the mixture of deploying air baggage and in-use sun visors can have dangerous penalties, such as blinding you. This site describes these potential risks in some of those vehicles.
The Accident
A young male was driving a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse in rural Texas. Mainly because the sunshine was environment on the horizon, the passenger had her solar visor down to protect her eyes. As the car turned slowly but surely into a Very little League parking good deal, its left front wheel struck a modest write-up in the heart of the driveway that had been obscured by dust kicked up by other autos. Regardless of the reduced pace, and despite the absence of any destruction to the front bumper or entrance conclusion, the air baggage deployed.
As the passenger air bag deployed, it slammed into the passenger’s sunlight visor (sunshine shade), smashing it aside and sending it traveling. As a consequence, our customer was hit in the experience and was blinded in one particular eye. The sun visor remained attached to the vehicle by only a single strand of wire, given that the air bag smashed it off its attachments.
The drive from the deploying air bag was so powerful, that it ripped a jagged metal insert from within the sunshine visor suitable by the visor’s plastic shell. The pressure was also sturdy enough to shatter the vanity mirror that was portion of the sunshine visor.
Presented this unsafe conversation among the air bag and the sunshine visor, and specified the devastating injury that it prompted, it is not surprising that there was blood on the surface of the air bag.
Our Screening
To establish whether the passenger air bag was created in a way that allowed it to rip the sunlight visor off in the course of deployment when the visor was becoming employed, we analyzed another 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse at an impartial air bag take a look at facility. For the tests, we utilized both of those serious-time video cameras and pretty innovative substantial-velocity cameras. This higher-velocity movie of the testing permitted us to seize the passenger air bag / sunlight visor interaction in excellent detail, and to obviously document how the air bag rips the sunlight visor off its attachments.
In each just one of our tests, the passenger air bag smashed into the sun visor, ripped it off its attachments, and despatched it flying by means of the cabin of the auto, where by it could pose a threat to the passengers.
Despite the fact that this accident, and the testing we carried out, was in a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, other vehicles are also at risk for the exact same danger. For example, our investigation has discovered the subsequent autos offered in the United States all use the very same or significantly related passenger air bags and passenger solar visors as the ones we examined that shown the threat:
o 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse
o 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder
o 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Dodge Stratus
o 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Chrysler Sebring
Other cars may use various air bags or distinct solar visors, but that does not always necessarily mean that they are totally free from threat. For instance, some other motor vehicles may well also have a passenger air bag that deploys upward, together the windshield, and that can strike a sunshine visor that is currently being utilised. At the identical time, some other automobiles may perhaps have sunlight visors that are not particularly created to continue to be together immediately after currently being strike by an air bag.
