When my wife was broadsided in our Prius v (lowercase v for the Prius v wagon), the passenger side air bags deployed. Then the car spun around and the rear was destroyed, no air bags fired. And then the car bounced off the telephone pole and re-hit the car that t-boned her. Enough to damage the front end, but again no air bags. My question is, when the air bags deploy does it shut down the system so no more monitoring happens? B
Yup, you get one shot. The car is obviously damaged. So how does it know the next signal to deploy is genuine or not? Let alone if it receives that signal because the first impact could take out the ECUs. So generally it is designed to protect against what it can in the short time it can still make an educated guess. The microseconds between it knowing that it is hit but hasn't been crumpled completely yet.
With that minimal front damage, you don't want the front airbags to deploy. I'm not sure if the vehicle can deploy the airbags in two stages, though. Good question. Tandy 400
