Had accident

Sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you are unhurt. It definitely pays to replace the OEM tires with top-of-the-line tires. Tires are just too important to use anything less than the best. I think that Toyota should not scrimp on tires, and should sell the car with only the best, and allow the customer to specify all-season, summer, snow, etc., depending on their local climate.

 

This was a tire on a rim lying in the road?
I have seen that happen a lot over the last few years.
Trucks and vans have their spares underneath held up by a cable mechanism,
Cable rots or breaks and there goes the spare.
A friend of mine had one fall off his truck on the thruway.
He had a car on the trailer behind him, the friend of his following said the entire trailer jumped in the air. Luckily no-one was hurt.

 

Is it normal for the airbags to deploy for something that, to me, wouldn't seem like too devastating of an impact? I realize a blow out can cause loss of control in an instant, but that didn't seem to be the case here... someone with more knowledge please enlighten me on why they would be triggered.

 

Have the suspension checked over well, and for sure get an alignment. If the insurance is paying, this might be a good time for an aftermarket set of wheels. The retail cost of one alloy from Toyota will probably pay for a set of 4 aftermarket wheels (I did this when I had the same thing happen to my Cobalt SS). Too bad about the air bags, but glad you weren't hurt. I still have 2 airbag scars on my upper arms from 1997.

 

I agree - in fact, had the blowout led to a loss of control that ended up throwing the car into an obstacle, the fact the air bags were already spent could have led to some injuries (they're a single shot weapon, after all). There's a fine line between ensuring they go off when intended and not go off unless it is a frontal collision.

 

I am sorry to hear about your accident. It is most fortunate that you were not injured (other than being attacked by the airbags). I can only imagine that this did quite a bit of damage to your Prius. Hope things get repaired quickly.

 

Thanks for posting your experience, hope that you will fully recover.

Before your latest post, I thought you had hit a large truck tire - I would not have thought a car tire big enough to cause the airbags to fire. There are a couple of sensors in the front bumper that will trigger the SRS ECU to fire the front airbags. Apparently the right sensor was impacted when you hit the tire.

How fast were you going when you hit the tire?

 

Years ago when my wife and I had a mini-van, we lost the spare just like this...cable rusted out and it fell off. Never knew when or where it disappeared to and can only hope it didn't hurt/damage anyone/anything.

 

Those are a real poor system.
My son works at a Chrysler dealership, and there are plenty of people who have come in over the years when they find the first time they need their spare, either its gone, or the mechanism is frozen from rust. Especially in the New York climate.

 

I am very sorry to hear that. Good thing you are OK! Hope your Pri will recover soon... It also puzzles me a little that the airbags went off, but the hit apparently produced enough shock deceleration to trigger them. They are controlled by an accelerometer.

 

Make sure you check (or have someone check it) that the sensor that triggered the airbags is undamaged.

Nowadays, automakers, in an effort to avoid lawsuits, set the sensitivity of artbag deployment to quite high.
(people sue when their airbags failed to deploy...)
My niece's Civic was hit at intersection at very low speed (both vehicle just started to move - the other guy was STILL red light, but he wasn't paying attention!). The right rear quarter was hit. The side and curtain airbags deployed. The front passenger ended up with injury from the side airbag deployment on the right upper arm.
The curtain airbag helped cushion the head from hitting B-pillar, but the side airbag (from seat) deployment was totally unnecesary unless under a more severe impact. More improvement needed in calibration of airbag system. Due to damage on the C-pillar and rear wheel (suspension also), the Civic was totalled.