The Hidden Dangers of Air Bags and Sun Visors During Car Accidents

You expect your air bags to shield you from injuries through an incident. You assume to be equipped to use your sun visor to defend your eyes from the bright glare of the sunshine. Nonetheless, in some vehicles, the mixture of deploying air bags and in-use sunlight visors can have dangerous implications, like blinding you. This website page describes all those potential risks in some of people motor vehicles.

The Incident

A younger man was driving a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse in rural Texas. Mainly because the sunshine was environment on the horizon, the passenger experienced her sun visor down to shield her eyes. As the auto turned gradually into a Minor League parking great deal, its left front wheel struck a smaller put up in the centre of the driveway that had been obscured by dust kicked up by other vehicles. Irrespective of the low pace, and even with the deficiency of any problems to the entrance bumper or front close, the air luggage deployed.

As the passenger air bag deployed, it slammed into the passenger’s sunshine visor (solar shade), smashing it apart and sending it flying. As a result, our client was hit in the encounter and was blinded in one eye. The sunshine visor remained connected to the car by only a single strand of wire, because the air bag smashed it off its attachments.

The pressure from the deploying air bag was so potent, that it ripped a jagged metal insert from within the sunlight visor right via the visor’s plastic shell. The force was also powerful more than enough to shatter the self-importance mirror that was component of the sunlight visor.

Given this perilous conversation among the air bag and the sunshine visor, and specified the devastating damage that it brought about, it is not shocking that there was blood on the floor of the air bag.

Our Screening

To decide no matter whether the passenger air bag was built in a way that permitted it to rip the sunlight visor off throughout deployment when the visor was getting made use of, we tested yet another 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse at an impartial air bag check facility. For the tests, we made use of each genuine-time movie cameras and really refined large-speed cameras. This large-velocity video clip of the testing authorized us to capture the passenger air bag / sunshine visor interaction in great depth, and to evidently document how the air bag rips the sunshine visor off its attachments.

In each a person of our tests, the passenger air bag smashed into the solar visor, ripped it off its attachments, and sent it traveling via the cabin of the car, exactly where it could pose a hazard to the passengers.

Though this incident, and the tests we conducted, was in a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, other vehicles are also at risk for the exact threat. For illustration, our investigation has disclosed the following cars and trucks offered in the United States all use the similar or considerably equivalent passenger air bags and passenger sunlight visors as the types we examined that demonstrated 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 could use distinct air bags or diverse solar visors, but that does not automatically indicate that they are free of charge from threat. For instance, some other vehicles may also have a passenger air bag that deploys upward, along the windshield, and that can strike a sun visor that is getting utilised. At the similar time, some other autos might have sun visors that are not specially designed to remain alongside one another after remaining hit by an air bag.