Crash stories w/ and w/out airbags? - Page 4 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

speednjay · #46 02-08-2011, 08:44 PM

i think if u want safety ..get a volvo

t walgamuth · #47 02-08-2011, 10:25 PM

Pish.....I'd rather be in a benz than a volvo.

I started to say I have not been in a serious accident but in 1966 I was driving north on one of the main streets in Indianaopolis on my way to see Simon and Garfunkle with my future first wife. We were humming along in my dad's new 66 beetle. An older lady in a chevy II ran a light and hit us broadside on my side of the car. It pushed in the door 13" right at my pelvis.

I had a lap belt on (that's all there was back then). My gal did not have hers on. She saw the car coming. I did not. She turned her right shoulder toward the dash and it hit the big grab handle that was there and broke her upper arm in three places. Had to have pins put in.

My glasses went sideways out the side window and landed on the ground somewhere, my seat wrapped around my torso and became a very snug wrap around seat. My lap belt saved me form serious injury but broke in the end. I got some broken glass in my eye and a bruised hip but that is all.

The beetle was totalled.

compu_85 · #48 02-08-2011, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian Carlton

...

IF you are wearing your seat belt and shoulder harness, as they were designed, did an air bag lessen the severity of your injuries in any way?

I know this would be the case for me. I have very short legs, which means I have to have the seat really far forward. Without an airbag I would probably plant my face square on the steering wheel.

-J

josha37 · #49 02-08-2011, 10:32 PM

I have heard allot of stories of airbags needlessly breaking noses of people sitting to close... scoot back

compu_85 · #50 02-08-2011, 10:37 PM

Then I can't reach the pedals. Makes it hard to drive when you can't reach the controls.

josha37 · #51 02-08-2011, 10:41 PM

Get a car without airbags and locking seat belts that work.

compu_85 · #52 02-09-2011, 02:06 AM

Already have one

If my audi were an 89 it would have proconten, but the 88 does not.

-J

Skippy · #53 02-09-2011, 02:26 AM

My crash story:

Around 1996 I was driving a POS '76 Buick Century (no airbag of course) and making a left turn on to a major road. I was hit behind the rear axle by an early 90's Saturn. The hit was hard enough to total the Saturn. I continued driving the Buick for several more months with a caved in left rear quarter. I don't remember the Saturn having airbags, and both drivers were uninjured.

A friend in college got hit in the side while driving an air bag equipped car. Frontal airbags aren't supposed to deploy in a side impact, but this time they did. She would not have been injured at all had the airbag not deployed, but it did, and my friend received a broken wrist as a result.

Due to two facts (and other less important reasons), I avoid cars with airbags. Those facts are:

1. Air bags kill short people.
2. I am a short person.

I know I'm oversimplifying a bit, but that's the meat of it.

vstech · #54 02-09-2011, 10:54 AM

I've told this story before here, but here goes...
2000ish, driving an 89 astro van cargo loaded pretty well. doing about 50mph on a main road. entered an intersection and the old lady sitting in the turn lane decides to floor it to try and beat me through I guess... NOPLACE to go. I hit the brakes maybe 1/2 second before impact... hit that car so hard the VAN spun around twice. the car vaulted itself over two lanes and landed in the grass.
I don't know if you have ever seen up close an astro van, but it has NO crumple zones... the front frame section goes all the way to the bumper. that 6" tube frame was curled like a sardine can coil... REALLY smashed the other car. I think it was a mid 80's grenada or something large sedan. I separated all the ribs on my left side and suffered heavy bruises from the seat belt. that's it.
no air bag. the lady in the gredada never recovered. I don't know if she was wearing a belt or not, but there was no air bag in the car.
the astro van is a HEAVY vehicle, and it was loaded with a lot of computers and such...

cirrusman · #55 02-09-2011, 11:28 AM

My first car was a 1987 Pontiac Fiero GT, and I never lost a race in that little car. They do have a little perk and it is that since the car is all made of plastic and has a V6 in the rear with a RWD, it makes for a car that likes to spin under certain conditions (namely heavy acceleration on a wet surface) which is what happened. I downshifted from 4th to 3rd gear to get some more RPMs and the car just started spinning around, hitting the left side curb first, bouncing to the right lane curb, jumping on the walkway and hitting a huge concrete light pole, tail first, on which the car was wrapped around. No airbag but since I hit the ploe rear first I guess the airbag would have been superfluous. I walked away without a scratch, but the car was unrecognizable. That was the end to my racing days. My 300SD makes sure of that these days.

jcciem · #56 02-09-2011, 03:11 PM

Pictures are always better than just a description. Pictures of my '91 350SD @ 535,000 miles. Two years ago, 30 mph offset frontal crash into a tractor trailer. I was moving at 30 mph, the tractor trailer at <1 mph. Both airbags deployed. Bag deployment kept me from getting whiplash for sure.

'94 SL500 55,000
'87 300SDL 296,000
'89 300TE 180,000
'91 350SD 193,000 repairing minor crash damage (salvage vehicle)
(love those 350 rod bender engines)

moon161 · #57 02-09-2011, 03:29 PM

End of summer '04. Wrong turn on the way home from an amusement park, wife and friend following in another car. Pulled over past the bottom of an overpass to let her know we had to turn it around, they didn't pull as far onto the shoulder as I did. Got back into the 83 Mazda 323 (Cherry shape, ~32k, old athiest lady's car- didn't even go to church on sundays), most of the way through a U-turn, the lights came up, glimpse of an ambulance, woke up in the ER w/ concussion & bruised hip, few weeks before I got back to work.

A passat had flown over the overpass, seen a set of lights on the shoulder, shifted into the left lane instead of slowing, set him up to T-bone me at door & B pillar. Banana'd the 323, first responder told my wife I was dead and called the helicopter. After the jaws of life, the ambulance took me to county trauma center where they waited for me to wake up 2 hours later. 3 year old in center of back seat was fine. Most lasting damage was to my wife who could only watch. No airbag, lucky I got hit by a smaller car.

300sdToronto · #58 02-09-2011, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MonsieurBon

Thanks for all the anecdotes so far, folks!

My sister has totalled two Saturn SL2s, neither one her fault (at least according to insurance adjuster), and both full on frontal smacks at 40+mph. Both times the airbags deployed. She's about my height 5'9" and sits reasonably far back from the wheel. She says both times the airbag did hit her in the face, but not very hard, and the seatbelt retained her the most. She also says she could feel the ABS working both times, so like many of you have been saying, perhaps it's something I should also be looking for.

I never drive without my seatbelt. I imagine that the airbag might help with whiplash by preventing the head from going too far forward?

I guess there's another part to this question. I haven't yet test driven a Mercedes Benz. From what I vividly remember of every mid 80s Volvo (also safe, also big) that I have driven, I did always feel very safe, but when driving through winding mountain passes i felt like it wasn't the structural safety of the car, but the handling that I was concerned about. A nice safety cage doesn't do you much good if you go skidding into a crevasse. Any thoughts on that?

-Aaron

I had a 1984 or 5 VW Jetta Diesel, which is exactly the same car as a Rabbit with a trunk on the back rather than a hatch-back. It was t-boned by a taxi (ex police cruiser) doing about 35 to 40mph.

The taxi hit just aft of the passenger door hinges. He was going fast enough to push me across two lanes of traffic, without hitting anything else, and to smash the driver's fender into a lampost on the opposite sidewalk. It was quite a dramatic accident. The VW was bent like a banana - the entire vehicle was bent around the point of impact - and the passenger door was literally bent in around the edge of the passenger seat. The floor on the passenger side was distorted and crumpled up under the dash.

I still thank God that I was travelling alone and had no passenger.

In short, the 1980's VWs have poor crash protection. If you value that feature buy a Mercedes.

roundout · #59 02-09-2011, 08:30 PM

The fact that a vehicle has airbags doesn't necessarily mean that they will even deploy in an accident.

I got my Mercedes after my wife and I were in a wreck in my 2002 Jetta TDI. Traffic was slow/stopped at the bottom of a long hill and as soon as I crested it, I saw the tail lights and got out of the go pedal and started slowing down. Some dip**** kid in his mom's Acura 3.2TL tooled us going about 80 while we were slowing through about 50. The impact knocked us sideways and I lost control, sliding sideways in to the next lane where the was a semi. Fortunately he was also slowing down for the traffic ahead - i remember hearing his jake brake. Our car impacted the trailer about where the landing gear sits squarely in both A pillars, tacoing both of them and the windshield. The rear wheels of the trailer impacted the right front door of the car, where my wife was sitting, pushing the door in on itself and spinning the car back out in to traffic. I opened my eyes and we were sitting square in the middle lane coasting about 20mph. I pulled in to the left shoulder and set the ebrake. I walked around for about 10 minutes talking to cops and witnesses before I realized that the blurry vision I was experiencing was not due to injury but due to the fact that my glasses had departed my head. I found them in the back seat floor along with some stuff that was in the breast pocket of my shirt.

This vehicle was equipped with curtain airbags, front airbags, and airbag seats. None of them deployed. Nobody at VW was ever able to tell me whether they malfunctioned or whether the odd location of the impacts (A pillars vs full on frontal for the front bags, low speed impact for the side and seat bags) was to blame. I have a VAGCOM and the car had no faults before or after. We both walked away. My wife had a broken nose from some flying loose objects in the car. Since nobody was hurt, we took their offer on the car and I never found out about the possible malfunction.

I would take German metal of any flavor over just about anything else out there. Toyotas are also safe. I was the not-at-fault in a total loss on a Camry that I walked away from. My sister in law had some uninsured "alien" clip her weaving in and out of traffic on the Katy freeway in Houston. Her 4Runner rolled 2 or 3 times after she tried to correct the swerve that the "alien" put her truck in to. She walked away. As an aside, the police said thy couldn't determine who was at fault since it was a sideswipe type collision. The "alien" had the nerve to sue her but then didn't show up in court. What a nightmare.

Hatterasguy · #60 02-09-2011, 09:51 PM

In a crash I'll take a 2011 Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus. Screw the old stuff, technology has come about as far in the past 20 years as it did from 1930-1985.

View Poll Results: How has an airbag or no airbag helped you?
Serious accident, airbag saved life	6	13.95%
Serious accident, no airbag, alive and well	33	76.74%
Serious accident, no airbag, seriously hurt	4	9.30%
Serious accident, airbag no help, seriously injured	0	0%
Voters: 43. You may not vote on this poll