The Hidden Dangers of Air Bags and Sun Visors During Car Accidents
You hope your air bags to safeguard you from injury throughout an incident. You assume to be able to use your sunshine visor to shield your eyes from the shiny glare of the solar. However, in some vehicles, the combination of deploying air baggage and in-use solar visors can have perilous penalties, together with blinding you. This website page describes those hazards in some of these vehicles.
The Incident
A younger man was driving a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse in rural Texas. For the reason that the sunlight was setting on the horizon, the passenger had her solar visor down to defend her eyes. As the car or truck turned slowly and gradually into a Little League parking lot, its still left front wheel struck a compact write-up in the center of the driveway that experienced been obscured by dust kicked up by other cars. Despite the very low speed, and irrespective of the deficiency of any problems to the front bumper or front conclude, the air bags deployed.
As the passenger air bag deployed, it slammed into the passenger’s sunshine visor (sunshine shade), smashing it aside and sending it traveling. As a outcome, our client was hit in the face and was blinded in one particular eye. The solar visor remained hooked up to the automobile by only a one strand of wire, considering the fact that the air bag smashed it off its attachments.
The pressure from the deploying air bag was so strong, that it ripped a jagged metallic insert from within the sunlight visor ideal via the visor’s plastic shell. The force was also strong ample to shatter the vanity mirror that was portion of the sun visor.
Supplied this unsafe interaction involving the air bag and the sun visor, and presented the devastating injuries that it induced, it is not astonishing that there was blood on the surface of the air bag.
Our Tests
To ascertain irrespective of whether the passenger air bag was created in a way that allowed it to rip the sunshine visor off in the course of deployment when the visor was staying utilised, we analyzed a different 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse at an unbiased air bag exam facility. For the testing, we utilized both true-time movie cameras and really advanced substantial-velocity cameras. This higher-speed movie of the tests allowed us to capture the passenger air bag / sun visor conversation in wonderful detail, and to plainly doc how the air bag rips the sunlight visor off its attachments.
In each individual one particular of our checks, the passenger air bag smashed into the sun visor, ripped it off its attachments, and despatched it flying through the cabin of the automobile, exactly where it could pose a danger to the travellers.
Even though this incident, and the testing we executed, was in a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, other vehicles are also at risk for the exact threat. For instance, our investigation has exposed the following autos offered in the United States all use the similar or substantially similar passenger air luggage and passenger sun visors as the types we examined that shown the hazard:
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 vehicles could use various air baggage or different solar visors, but that does not essentially imply that they are free of charge from hazard. For case in point, some other vehicles could also have a passenger air bag that deploys upward, alongside the windshield, and that can strike a solar visor that is being utilized. At the similar time, some other cars may well have sunlight visors that are not especially designed to continue to be together soon after remaining hit by an air bag.