steven975

true, but carmakers and dealers are so afraid of getting sued they may actually replace the belts, free of charge.

letting someone off the lot with bad belts can open them up to liability...possibly. They may replace the belts instead of risk it.

Eh, it's worth a try!

mikegarrison

Why? My impact was from the back and then the side of the front. Airbags are only supposed to go off if you exceed a certain deceleration level on a frontal impact.

Did you nose into the "jersey wall"? If you did, then they worked like they were supposed to. If you hit it from any angle other than the front, then I'd say it was you who had the defective airbags.

Ek9

Lets not argue about who has defective airbags now. We're all adults! Just kidding.

Wish mine hadn't gone off since it was totally unnecessary. I believe I bounced off it with the tail then the front slewed around and tagged it with the side of the front bumper.

Actually, now that I think about the missing paint it might have been more frontal than I thought. It did feel like they went off "after the fact" though.

Slows2k

If the pretensioners deploy, the belts and the SRS unit must be replaced. Any time a SRS component deploys the unit must be replaced.

The lifetime seatbelt warranty doesn't apply, It's even in the owners manual. The belts are covered if your dog chews them either.

The unit does all the calculations on weather or not to deploy the bags. There is no data that can be pulled out of the unit by a dealer to detrmine how fast you where goin gwhen the bags deployed.

If the bags and belts deployed, the unit decided the impact was severe enough to warrant deployment. I've seen bags deploy from people hitting potholes at high speed. Aside from the deployed bags, they also had massive suspension damage.

Ek9

That's interesting about the data. GM's had logging in their air bag controllers since, the early 90's or before. It'll tells you things like which switch activated first (GM used two impact sensors back them) and so forth. It'll monitor up to 4 impacts and can be read with a scanner. It's very similiar to OBD2's freeze frame data.

I learned this while working for an expert witness on a case where there was a question of whether the bag deployment happened after the accident or whether the air bag deployment from hitting a curb caused the accident. (by knocking the drivers hands off the wheel). Driver was killed.

I couldn't work with the expert witness long. He must have had 20-30 cases against the car companies. I thought most of them were pretty frivolous. For example, another case involved a car that wouldn't idle down. Probably something with the IAC. The driver reached down and tried to pull the floor mat out, went into an intersection was T-boned and killed. So, the family's going after the car company.

This was all 15 years ago.