jonesy95

Hey guys/gals,

I let my brother-in-law & sister-in-law used my 00' ML320 the other night and they had a really bad accident during a heavy downpour. The truck hydroplaned, spun, hit a curb, and rolled-over twice (or maybe 3 times). My in-laws escaped with few bumps and bruises. My sister-in-law had the most severe injury...She sustained a 3-inch gash on her forehead. Not too deep though cause she did not require stiches.

Let me get to the point...The following airbags did not deploy:
Drivers Front Airbag
Passengers Front Airbag
Passengers Side Airbag

All remaining and useless airbags (except for the driver Side bag) deployed.

Is that normal in a complete rollover? Multiple times too

clkwork

That's normal. Airbags are not designed to prevent injury in a rollover and have systems to prevent them from going off when they will do more harm than good.

Actually I think the passenger side airbag should have gone off, but the front ones definitely should not have.

Stiggs

So they rolled the ML twice and were able to basically walk away unharmed. Thats good news on the safety of the ML!

Newzchspy

+1, I'm no engineer, BUT agree with the above that airbags are not necessarily supposed to go off on an "off axis" accident, meaning roll-over. The parameters of airbag deployment are "factory set" with sudden deceleration and/or impact being the primary one for the fronts and the same for sides (side impact). Your statement that they were "useless" is illogical if the bags were not supposed to go off in the first place. Maybe they were more "useful" staying in place than activating in that particular case.

The fact that there were only cuts and bruises is a great testament to the ML 55s crashworthiness!!!