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My 2012 c300 4matic was involved in a crash on 1/2/15.
My 75 year old mother was driving the car to the mall to return some unwanted gifts.
As far as we can tell, she had forgotten to take her blood pressure medication that morning and possibly blacked out or got dizzy / disoriented behind the wheel. In 50+ years of driving this is her first accident EVER. She does not remember the collision and or the events leading up to it. She only remembers post waking up in the hospital.
Here's the scenario.
She is traveling along a semi commercial 2 lane divided road, speed limit 45 mph.
According to witnesses her car drifted to the right (or the road curved a bit, and being out of it she didn't follow the road) and struck a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was parked on the side of the road dragging it 90 ft until both vehicles came to a stop. Witnesses said that she made no last min attempt to avoid the collision and or apply the brakes. She struck the car with her foot on the gas at approximately 40-50 miles an hour.
The initial impact was on the passenger front, but the entire nose of the car was destroyed.
The accident scene:
Now, this car DID save her life. She has no life threatening injuries. But when I got to the scene, I noticed one thing that immediately disturbed me. The airbags had NOT deployed and she had struck and severely distorted the steering wheel with her face. She is 5'6" 121lbs. She was wearing her seatbelt, and at the time they were much more concerned with more life threatening injuries and they placed her on a backboard with a cervical collar. She was rushed to a trauma center.
Here is her list of injuries:
4 Broken ribs - right side
Broken Jaw (right side) two teeth knocked out, one cracked. Laceration requiring 11 stitches in her mouth / lip.
Dislocated right knee
Sprained right ankle
Concussion
And large areas of bruising on both arms / torso, and leg.
This is what the steering wheel looked like:
A couple more of the car at my shop:
The impact was hard enough to dislodge the motor from the mounts, and bend the left cylinder head.
The car, waiting to be sold for salvage at copart:
Now. My concern is the severe facial injury she suffered would have most likely not occurred had the airbag deployed and her face not had made contact with the steering wheel. Sure she may have had some injury from the airbag, but I highly doubt that her injury would have been this dramatic.
Also, her right knee was dislocated. MB specifically added Driver Knee Airbags to the w204 C for the 11+ model year to to NTHSA reports of high rates of driver knee injury in frontal collisions.
We are a almost month in, and she's slowly starting to heal but still in a great amount of pain and agony. She had an arthroscopic surgery to repair the damage to her knee, and she will start PT next week. She has lost 11 lbs since the accident mostly bc of how difficult and painful eating / swallowing is.
I contacted MB customer service regarding the lack of airbag deployment, who was initially very receptive to my concern, only to come back a few days later, say that their engineers investigated and that the vehicle performed as designed, and that there was no fault or defect with the vehicle, and that the airbag system was not designed to prevent the type of injuries she sustained. They refused to share any findings or written report (even though they specifically mentioned one being prepared) and that was that.
I just don't see why the bags did not deploy. I have seen several c300's on copart with passenger side offset frontal collisions, most with significantly less overall damage, and all have deployed the airbags.
Car did the job well, was her seat belt on at the time ( how was this verified), yes I read where you say it was, or was she disoriented enough not to put it on. Any sudden jerk would have locked the seat belt, which should have not allowed her to go forward.
Hope all works out for her.
IMHO you should be very upset. Based on the report of your mothers facial injures and it appears that the top of the steering wheel is bent at the top which would suggest that her face contacted the steering wheel. As she was reported to have been wearing her seat belt I would have thought that the airbag should have deployed and prevented her from hitting the steering wheel. Need to hear what Mercedes position on this is. Let us know how this turns out and I hope for your mothers speedy recovery.
If you are considering a lawsuit please stop posting anything on public forums NOW. Discuss with an attorney and proceed accordingly. You can tell us the story later on. We will wait anyway. Good luck.
If you are considering a lawsuit please stop posting anything on public forums NOW. Discuss with an attorney and proceed accordingly. You can tell us the story later on. We will wait anyway. Good luck.
I've seen a number of cars with significant impacts that did not blow the bags if it doesn't hit on the sensor just right. Never the less, I would have expected them to blow here.
Manufacturing and/or design defect lawsuit. Pretty sick if the steering wheel is actually bent. Hope you took good pictures before they sold the salvage. Problem with such a lawsuit is the cost to prove such a thing. Any updates?
01-29-2015, 02:56 PM
