i would like to know at what speed on impact will the drivers air bag deploy on a Kia Sorento
2007-09-17 19:53:30 · 4 answers · asked by mike p 3 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Safety
That is a difficult question. Generally, airbags will deploy upon hitting a solid object (brick wall scenario) at 8-14 miles per hour. Airbags do not have a single switch or trigger, though. They have multiple triggers that must all agree within a milisecond. Some of these triggers are inertia switches and some are collision switches and recently, seat switches for the passenger seat (airbag won't deploy unless a prescrbed amount of weight is in the seat).
So, back to the speed of 8-14 MPH, that only works with a solid object, however if you hit another vehicle (front or side) at 8-14 MPH, it may not provide enough of a sudden reduction in momentum (jolt) to trigger the inertia switches because the vehicle you hit will absorb a lot of the impact.
I just hit another car last Saturday at about 45 MPH, but my aribags didn't deploy because it wasn't a frontal collision rather an oblique collision where my front right bumper hit her front quarterpanel. The change in inertia was oblique rather than in line the direction of travel.
2007-09-17 20:11:09 · answer #1 · answered by ldeweyjr 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Probably not a fixed number and it also depends on the angle that you impact (so that the airbag doesn't inflate if it won't do any good).
2007-09-18 00:17:30 · answer #2 · answered by bestonnet_00 7 · 0⤊ 3⤋
supposed to be 35 on all cars sold in the USA.
2007-09-17 22:41:05 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
14mph seems to be the standard for American Manufacturers....
2007-09-18 00:07:31 · answer #4 · answered by RiverRat 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋