SliverGray

Hi guys
I have 2008 C300 4matic now. After I read the article of an airbag problem, I begin to worry about my car because that accident may happen to me. New C class car accident happened in a highway in South Korea. Even if the car severely clashed at the front area due to a head on collision with another car, front airbags were not deployed at all. After the investigation from Mercedes Benz in Korea, they said that not working airbags in the accident is reasonable, and it will not make any problem with new C class in the future because the car got a damage on only an area which absorbs impact energy during the car clash and the frame for activating airbags did not break at all. The car driver was seriously injured due to the failure of the front airbags in the accident. I post the picture of the car and link for a video clip. What do you think about it?


http://news.naver.com/vod/vod.nhn?of...ection_id2=239

syrAMG

damn... its sad to hear that MB will not make any changes, even though
the driver was severly injured.

its kinda scary to think that the bent steering is from the driver's head...

Devastator187

Scary! Hope that is just a single defect and not mass production.

jstaneff

I'm sure I don't like this ....

Are airbag deployment requirements different in Korea than in the USA? Do they vary world-wide?

What are the specific standards that the US government puts on how and when they deploy? For the car to be sold here, it must meet those standards.

What constitutes "severe" injuries? Is it a broken wrist, a broken leg, or serious back/neck injuries, or even a head injury?

Yes, cars are survivable, even when the accident looks bad. Saving the airbag while causing truly debilitating injury is not just wrong, designing it to work that way is illegal.

SliverGray

Based on my knowledge, Korea has the same airbag deployment requirement as one in the USA. If a car is not allowed to sell in the USA due to a safety reason, it can not be definitely sold in Korea. I don’t know how much he got exactly hurt because the article did not mention any specific injury on his body.

white46

just saying to follow korean.
i saw the news from daum as well. yes, it's kinda scary to see that the airbag didn't deploy.
on the other hand, it makes sense tho. airbag shouldn't deploy on every single accident. i guess it's all down to how sensitive sensor should be.

wblynch

As we are learning, US regulations don't mean anything in the modern age with lack of enforcement by the agencies and the appointment of unqualified political cronies to senior positions.

I am certainly not placing any confidence in US regulatory agencies to protect me or my family these days.

keith100

Take heart, the EU tests them even more severely. Both can't be wrong. I have been in a shunt in a car with a collapsible front end. The damage was spectacular, but I was fine.

Anyway, don't get too alarmed over a press report - remember the runaway Audis ? CBS was particularly into it, and all sorts of reports then followed of "MY Audi just took off - I couldn't stop it" Turned out the original story was wrong. Press didn't bother to check the poor owner's original report, where she admitted that she hit the gas pedal by mistake.

Now we all get starting interlocks, for something that actually never happened.........hmmm......maybe your right about the regulators.

MB Fanatic

The airbag will not deploy if you are not wearing a seatbelt. If he was wearng a seat belt, there is no way in hell that the seat tensioners failed with the force of the deceleration. Something is very fishy about this story.

lx Raven xl

+1

jstaneff

A friend who reads/speaks Korean read the article as I watched. His comment afterward was exactly that: "Was the guy wearing the seatbelt?" It is left unsaid in the article, but there is a suggestion that it wasn't worn.

If this is indeed the situation, it makes me feel a tad bit better. I always wear the belt ;-)

RLE

That is an absolutely false statement. Where in hell does this kind of crap originate?

If the belt is not latched, the airbag (s) will operate at a lower speed and g-force. If a belt is not latched, it's tensioner will not activate.

The impact sensors are in the front of the car and incorporate g-force sensors and since this Korean car's bags did not operate, Mercedes is going to have to explain it and if that has happened in the US, it would be a very big deal, probably ending up in court.

MB Fanatic

After my wife had an accident in the GL, I spoke to an MBUSA rep since my GL550 was the first on totalled in the country. He reiterated that even with smart airbags, if the seat belt is not worn, the bag will no deploy.Even if the airbag deploys at the slowest speed, it could still injure you. If he had his seat belt on, the pretensioners would have held him in his seat and prevented his body from shifting far enough to hit the steering wheel.

axhoaxho

I think you are correct. The seatbelts and airbags in the modern cars are designed to work together. Without wearing the seatbelt, the airbags wouldn't protect us as much (or in cases even cause injury.)

As a side note, I was recently in a car accident. The modern seatbelt actually had a little explosive inside that exploded during the impact to tighten the seatbelt in split second. I could smell the explosive from the seatbelt area right after the accident, and the mechanisim had to be replaced with a new one (since the explosive is only a one-time use.) My lesson learned is to always wear our seatbelt.

With best regards,

MB Fanatic

That was the seatbelts pre-tension system. This insures when you slam the brakes hard it always deploys, or if there is a large amount of deceleration.

lx Raven xl

Not that I am an expert, but i agree the seat belt and the air bags are connected. Why I beleive this is cose , my bro bought the BMW 3 series 2 months ago aprox. since week 1 he was getting an airbag and a seat belt sign warning on his dash and the Idrive system as soon as he started the car.

After taking to the BMW service , they explained the sensor in the seat belt of the driver side is out of order and hence the warning sign for the airbag and seat belt as they operate on same system. TThey had to replace it. It took them 1.5 months to do that as the part had to be ordered from Germany.

Hence the conclusion , Seat belts are connected with Air bag system.

Phill B

A couple of years ago I attended an MB drive/safety day at Mt Cotton in Brisbane, organised by MB Brisbane. MB Australia had sent along a number of their driver training staff and some race drivers, as well as a fleet of cars to drive for the day.

A presentation of “the anatomy of a crash” was put on that lasted about an hour. With the aid of a SL500 in the room the instructor went through the scenario of running off a corner (too much speed into the corner), hitting dirt and heading for, and hitting a tree.

He went through every safety system on the car and went to great lengths to explain the interaction between the sensor arrays in the front of the car, sensors in the seats to read the driver/passenger’s mass, the seatbelt pre-tensioning system and the airbag. The pre-tensioners and airbags are designed to work together i.e. no seatbelt, no airbag.

From memory, it went like this. Once the impact is detected and the car judges it to be “a biggie”, the pre-tension system, using an explosive charge, takes up all the slack in the seatbelt and pins you to the back of the seat. Once the car starts to rapidly decelerate, the airbag fires and the seatbelt tension comes off to “lower” you into a deflating airbag. The whole aim of the system is to reduce your body’s deceleration rate to minimise damage to yourself, mind you this all takes place in fractions of a second.

MondayQB

As a Korean, I watched the short film regarding the almost totaled W204. I am not sure how many guys watched the video carefully but you could catch the moment showing that the driver seat space was not damaged.

The additional fact revealed was that the driver was an old lady, mom of the guy who were pissed off.

I don't think that she did not wear a seatbelt but what I am suspecting that she DID NOT FASTEN TIGHTLY the belt by using a kind of nipper. Many drivers who are usually old generation, in Korea do not feel comfortable with the pressure of the seatbelt even if it is life-threatening. It is a bad habit.

Otherwise, Mercedes must do something for this instantly. It could happen to everybody driving a W204.