Things that go BUMP in the night......

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Very early this morning I was driving my wife and MIL to the Spokane airport. My wife is going back to Illinois to attend a family get together and spend 3 weeks with her Mom who's been visiting here for 3 weeks. As we crested a hill, the 2 lane road curves to the left and goes through a rock cutbank. As we came out of the cutbank, this whitetail buck jumped in front of us.

I swerved left and aggressively applied the brakes on my wifes 2002 Honda Accord. I didn't get it stopped completely before striking the buck and the buck ended up damaging the hood. But that appears to be the limit of damage. He disappeared out of sight. I like 4 wheel disc brakes!

BTW.....the air bags didn't inflate and deploy. I'm glad...added expense! Besides we were all wearing seat belts. Will air bags deploy when striking an large animal like this? Could there be enough G-force involved to cause them to deploy if you were driving 60 mph and strike a 200 lb deer? Anbody know?

[Jim O'Dell]

My guess is yes, the sensors would deploy the bags, but a lot of that depends on the angle and point of inpact. I've seen fist sized rocks hit under the car just right to set the sensors off, and bumper hits that caused some damage, not set them off. Hard to say for sure.
Sounds like your reflexes are in good shape!:eek: I'm sure your heart rate elevated for a minute or two. Glad a little hood damage is all you, and the buck, suffered. Jim.

[Matt Meiser]

Yes, air bags will deploy if you hit it hard enough.

[Mark Rios]

Ken, I happen to be a FORD Certified Safety Restraint Technician which very much includes airbags and their assorted parts. (It's a long story as to why and I haven't used the cert for quite a while now but that's not important)

While you were in a Honda and not a Ford, air bag systems all operate the same way, using the same principles of momentum, enertia, etc. Your airbag system operated exactly the way it was supposed to. You didn't need it to deploy in this case, and it didn't.

If you're really interested I can tell you exactly what the mechanics in the airbag system are that happen in an impact but it's fairly boring and doesn't really matter to most of us. Suffice to say, your system did it's job, in this case by NOT deploying. And the main thing is that you and your family are okay. That's most important.

You stated in your last sentence:


Besides we were all wearing seat belts.

Your airbags and seatbelts are designed to be used in tandem AS A SYSTEM. The seatbelts being an active part and the airbags being kind of a passive part. I'm sure that you always wear your seatbelts but it's never a good idea to think that one is as good as both. Today's safety restraints, belts AND bags, are designed to be used together.


hth

[Lee DeRaud]

Will air bags deploy when striking an large animal like this? Could there be enough G-force involved to cause them to deploy if you were driving 60 mph and strike a 200 lb deer? Anbody know?I'd guess "not": the heavy part of the deer will go over the bumper and thus miss the sensors completely. Not sure that's enough weight to set them off in any case...might not get enough decelleration, what with the car being upwards of 3000 pounds.

[Jim Becker]

Your airbags and seatbelts are designed to be used in tandem AS A SYSTEM. The seatbelts being an active part and the airbags being kind of a passive part. I'm sure that you always wear your seatbelts but it's never a good idea to think that one is as good as both. Today's safety restraints, belts AND bags, are designed to be used together.

Not only designed to work together...without the belts on, the air bags could "get nasty" on you in many circumstances. Personally, I wear my seatbelt even when moving the car around in the driveway three feet. Same on the Kubota. If it's moving, my belt is on.
-------

Ken, sorry to hear about the "bump in the night", but glad that you are all fine and that the damage was confined to the hood.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Mark......Thanks for the reply

Before the invention and forced application of air bags I was in 2 car wrecks. In both cases the car I was driving was totaled. I walked away with only one injury as a result of both wrecks. In the second wreck I had the forefinger on my right hand dislocated and I was able to put it back in place myself. The first accident I was age 18 and I had bought a car that had seatbelts in it but had never worn them. That morning...call it fate...karma...whatever...I came out .....put on the seatbelts.....9 miles down the road came into some fog....a tractor trailer loaded with rolls of steel was on the wrong side of the road and hit me head on. I walked a way with a bruise where my forehead hit the steering wheel. I can honestly say I've not driven without wearing seat belts since! Ask me if I believe in them?

My children have always known seatbelts. My youngest son born in 1972 came home in a car seat and they weren't that popular then....just beginning to be manufactured.


And yet......it riles me up that I can't turn those air bags off ....or disable them. There's no denying they are invaluable in an accident.......but I have a wife who's 5'2" and friends who are short.....and air bags have been known to be deadly at worst and dangerous at best for people who have to sit close to the steering wheel. Rant off!

[Tyler Howell]

Seat Belts Save Lives.
In 35 years of EMS work, I've never unbuckled a corpse.
I've been to MVAs where you could drive the vehicle away and there were no survivors.:(
Glad you're all OK Ken.

[Mark Rios]

Mark......Thanks for the reply

Before the invention and forced application of air bags I was in 2 car wrecks. In both cases the car I was driving was totaled. I walked away with only one injury as a result of both wrecks. In the second wreck I had the forefinger on my right hand dislocated and I was able to put it back in place myself. The first accident I was age 18 and I had bought a car that had seatbelts in it but had never worn them. That morning...call it fate...karma...whatever...I came out .....put on the seatbelts.....9 miles down the road came into some fog....a tractor trailer loaded with rolls of steel was on the wrong side of the road and hit me head on. I walked a way with a bruise where my forehead hit the steering wheel. I can honestly say I've not driven without wearing seat belts since! Ask me if I believe in them?

My children have always known seatbelts. My youngest son born in 1972 came home in a car seat and they weren't that popular then....just beginning to be manufactured.


And yet......it riles me up that I can't turn those air bags off ....or disable them. There's no denying they are invaluable in an accident.......but I have a wife who's 5'2" and friends who are short.....and air bags have been known to be deadly at worst and dangerous at best for people who have to sit close to the steering wheel. Rant off!



Ken, a fix IS possible. About a year and a half or two years before the first pick-ups were to come out with a keyed switch (mounted in the dash) for the passenger side airbag, Ford (and I believe/assume other North American truck manufacturers) came out with an add-on switch. 1998(?) maybe????? or thereabouts. Not alot of dealers that I heard of would install it however due to liability reasons.

At this time in my life, I was helping my father manage his bodyshop at a local Ford dealership until he retired. Among other things, I was the Ford warranty tech AND warranty manager (for bodyshop related warranty items). Since I had the airbag training and other experience in my background, I got together with the Dealership owner/manager and we devised a way to do the installation with the legal things worked out. We were the ONLY dealership in our part of CA that would do these. (I actually never heard of anyone else installing them.) It really wasn't that big of a deal; It just required having the ability to follow Ford's installation procedures TO THE LETTER! We had the vehicle owners sign a three page liability waiver :rolleyes: and I did the install on a number of vehicles. We charged an outrageous price but those who really wanted/needed it done got it done.

My point is that there IS a procedure for that kind of keyed switch. However, the procedures that I was familiar with applied only to pick-ups and other vehicles without another seating place for passengers.


.....and air bags have been known to be deadly at worst and dangerous at best for people who have to sit close to the steering wheel.

While this was absolutely the case with the first generations of airbags, this has been addressed in subsequent generations. If it's any consolation, Your 2002 Honda should have a fourth, or later, generation airbag system in it. The newer systems (which yours may or may not have; sorry, I don't know) have sensors that detect the position of the seat in relation to the airbag and, in some cases, the weight of the person in the seat as well. This is to deploy the airbag with more or less force depending on the weight/size of the person, thus lessening the injury potential to the driver/passenger.

I can put my backpack (or one of my dogs) on the front seat of my 2005 Toyota Corolla and if it's full with my laptop and books and stuff, the airbag light will flash and beep 50 time (yes, actually 50) to tell the "passenger" to buckle up. I think minimum weight is something like 30 or 40 pounds or something like that. If the belt isn't buckled, the passenger side airbag is deactivated and the "deactivated" light goes on.

I know this post has gone on for a long time but there is another feature of the airbag systems that some might not be aware of that I find pretty neato:

On each of the front seatbelts, in later generation systems, there is a device called a "seatbelt pre-tensioner". This little device is VERY expensive but it does a VERY neato job. In the event of an accident, the same sensors that activate the airbags also activate these pre-tensioners. They take the seat belt (the long part that you pull over you, not the buckle) and a little explosive charge sucks that belt down tight on your lap and shoulder, effectively pinning you back in the seat for the duration of the crash. This helps keep you from going forward between the moment of intial impact and the full inflation of the airbags. (IIRC, an impact lasts for approximately 3/10ths of a second and the airbags deploy somewhere between the first and second 10th of that. Somewhere around there, anyway.) These parts of the seatbelts are a one-time use so they must be replaced in the event of the airbag deployment, adding somewhere in the neighbor hood of $600 to $1000 to the repair costs. But they are another layer of protection in the unfortunate event of a crash, or in your case, a more serious impact with a deer.

Hope I didn't waste too much bandwidth with my long-winded post. :D

[Matt Meiser]

On each of the front seatbelts, in later generation systems, there is a device called a "seatbelt pre-tensioner".

Cool. I didn't know about that device. Hopefully I'll never test one.

I wonder how effective the air bags are at keeping the deer out of the car at high speed? I've heard stories about them coming through the windshield. Seems like the airbag might help with that since they become a barrier between the passengers and the windshield.

So Ken, did you still go to Woodcraft?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Nope..........I took the car home....I thought my tool money might have to pay for the insurance deductible!

[Matt Meiser]

Nope..........I took the car home....I thought my tool money might have to pay for the insurance deductible!

WHAT??? Its your wifes car and you were driving HER and HER MOTHER to the airport. And you SAVED THEIR LIVES by nearly missing that deer. THEY OWE YOU a trip to Woodcraft. :D :D

[Bryan Somers]

Seat Belts Save Lives.
In 35 years of EMS work, I've never unbuckled a corpse.
I've been to MVAs where you could drive the vehicle away and there were no survivors.:(
Glad you're all OK Ken.


That statement says volumes about saftey devices.
Can we not take that to also mean no one died because they were "trapped" in a seatbelt.

Glad you are OK Ken. It does sound like everything worked as It should for those circumstances. I did have to repair a car the air bags deployed in, very expensive.

[Art Mulder]

Seat Belts Save Lives.
In 35 years of EMS work, I've never unbuckled a corpse.


Tyler,
This is the sort of testimony that would be amazing pro-seatbelt advertising.

Mark,
Interesting comments you make about the multiple-generations of airbags and how they are being built now. A number of years ago, when the news stories were going around about people being hurt by airbags, I recall seeing a documentary that claimed that the early generation of airbags were designed with the assumption that the car passenger would not be wearing a seatbelt. At this time, seat belt use in the USA was still not very good. Therefore, the airbags were very powerful. If you were wearing a seat belt, the airbag need not be so forcefull. Be interesting if they could make the system tell if you're wearing a seatbelt or not, and act differently.

On a side note, I heard an interesting note about bike helmets recently. The person was observing at how successfull society has been in the last 20 years at pushing helmet use among kids. We're raising a generation of kids where wearing a bike helmet is just the norm. In contrast, when I grew up in the 70's, I'd never even heard of a helmet. (Sure the roads were emptier then)

I always were a bike helmet these days, and the seatbelt goes on before I even turn the ignition. I'm still surprised at the number of people I see who start driving their car, and then reach over to put on their seatbelt. :confused:

[Jerry Olexa]

Ken, 8 or 9 years ago when I still had my cabin, I was leaving and driving home (about twilight time-their roaming time). A big doe jumped out of the woods basically ran into my car (a Ford Explorer) while I was traveling 45-50mph. I braked hard. We still collided. Several bumps in front of vehicle. Sad part was I know I wounded the doe (sm amt of blood) and she ran off into the deep woods. Too dark to pursue and find out her fate or help her. I handled the bumps on car myself but it was a scary and moving experience. BTW, that SUV had no air bags...

[Dennis Peacock]

Ken,

Glad to know that all of you are ok. Cars can be fixed or replaced.

Mark....very good read on safety devices and clear understanding. Thanks!!

[Steve Ash]

Ken, first of all I'm glad everyone is okay....that being said,....




How many points was the buck?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Seriously Steve......he appeared to be a Western count 4 point. He really was a nice buck. He layed on the hood for a fraction of a second and in the twilight I got a good view of him. Then he engaged his front legs and disappeared.

[Corey Hallagan]

Ken, glad you and the wife were ok.

Corey

[Curt Fuller]

Ken, glad to hear you, your wife, and your MIL are OK. Maybe while your getting the Honda repaired you could have it drilled and tapped for a nice Leupold 3x9. ;)

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Thanks Curt but it costs too much to reload this rascal!:eek: :D

[Frank Chaffee]

When I was a hardworking young man in the eighties, the days before airbags existed in cars and many years before I became one, I worked long hours and most frequently commuted the 20 miles along the Wisconsin River and thru the hills in the dark.

A herd of more than one hundred deer lighted by the full moon in March, heading down to the river is a magnificent sight! Add the Aurora Borealis to the March commute and know that life has little more to offer than this.

But that same herd encountered two weeks either side of the full moon, when the Accord was turning 4k in fifth gear, was not simply something to watch for, but something to watch out for. Tho this was also in the days before ABS, fortunately heel and toe braking and downshifting would bring that sweet Accord to accord with deer movements.

My breathing exercise during those commutes involved becoming one with the deer herd’s movement, inspired by the Gary Snyder poem “And Deer Bound Through My Hair”.

I was always careful to be in a low enough gear at low speeds that I could accelerate away from a deer who might run into the side of my car.

My greatest concern regarding small car/deer encounters is that the deer can come through the windshield and flail the car’s occupants with sharp hoofs.

I’m sure glad Ken that you and your loved ones are alright after that encounter, and please let me in on the secret, exactly where is them wild ladies of yours taking the funny box?

Sometime later my friend, most likely in Milwaukee, we can share many more mountain driving stories. I’ll offer some of my Heavy Chevy Impala equipped with air shocks, transversely mounted railroad tracks at the front of the trunk (normally, but shifted to the rear for more traction in deeper snow), and onboard compressed air tank.

The Fairlane with three five gallon cans of gas in the roof rack traveling between Seattle and the Plains/ Paradise part of Montana, stopping only at the Red Lion Inn in Spokane for refreshments….err, ah sustenance.

And on… and on…

Frank

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Frank....when they left they didn't have the box.........don't know where they dropped it. It was here last week.....they left for Goldendale WA to see the grandkids over the 4th and I stayed home for business reasons. When they returned...the box wasn't in the car.........My wife packed for 3 weeks and 2 days of visiting in Illinois....that means 23 bags based on her 1 bag per day rule. I don't know how she cons the airlines into it .....Any way, I can testify to the fact there wasn't enough room in the Accord for the box ..........Check the thread.....maybe somebody's posted it's current location..........?

[Barry Stratton]

Thanks Curt but it costs too much to reload this rascal!:eek: :D

Handloads, Ken....handloads.

Glad everyone is okay, thats NOT a fun thing to happen. And be thankful it wasn't a moose or elk.....although those whitetail things seem to be real stupid around cars......

[Vaughn McMillan]

Glad to hear you and the others are OK, Ken. Your "As we crested a hill, the 2 lane road curves to the left..." comment sounded awfully familiar. I met an 800 pound steer at 70 mph that way once. I walked away; he didn't. Made me a firm believer in seatbelts. (It was a 1984 Bronco II, so no airbags.)

Less than a week later, in the same general area, I had a large bull elk come trotting out in the road ahead of me, but I saw him early enough to slow to nearly a stop as he trotted straight towards me in my lane. He came within about 10 yards of me before he changed lanes. (Dumber than a box of rocks.)

- Vaughn

[Larry Conely]

Last year, I hit a buck while driving my Ranger pickup. I was doing about 60 when I hit him. My airbag deployed (and I was wearing my seat belt.) No injuries to me but the buck went to the big pasture in the sky.

Larry