Driver's side airbag deployment- why?
#1
Driver'* side airbag deployment- why?
Car is a 95 Bonneville, 145K on the clock, and well maintained. No accidents ever to my knowledge, I owned the car for about two years and recently gave it to my adult daughter. Yesterday, after just coming off of an 800 mile round trip taking my son to Southern Illinois, she and a friend (friend driving) had just gotten back to town when for no apparent reason the driver'* side airbag deployed. She said they hadn't hit anything, no big bumps, she couldn't see any reason for it to go off, and there were no SRS lights before it happened. Luckily it didn't decide to blow when they were cruising down the I at 75mph, and luckily no damage was done to the car other than the steering cover and the bruises on her friend'* face. I'm trying to figure out why it would have deployed; most posts that refer to accidental deployments seem to indicate that if there is a bad sensor, both bags will blow, which didn't happen in this case (good thing, we still have a windshield!). Anybody else had this happen, and if so, were you able to figure out why? I'm going to assume GM is going to deny any responsibility on this whatsoever due to the age and miles on the car, so we didn't even plan to contact them. Right now my thoughts are to pick up a used bag in the correct color, and install it without hooking it up due to my thoughts that if it happened once, it can happen again. Without knowing for sure why this one blew and making sure that problem is fixed, I'm worried about putting her in a bad situation if the 'new' bag blows at a bad time, say at speed in the rain.
I'll take any insight anybody has on this, it has me and my mechanic buddy puzzled, he suggested a bad clockspring although normally those will cause an SRS light when they go intermittent.
I'll take any insight anybody has on this, it has me and my mechanic buddy puzzled, he suggested a bad clockspring although normally those will cause an SRS light when they go intermittent.
#2
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WOW!! that'* crazy!! glad all are ok say for a few bruises.
i would lean towards the clock spring as well. although it doesn't take much energy to set one off it has too many circuits to go through to be able too deploy alone without the other one without a known cause.
i would lean towards the clock spring as well. although it doesn't take much energy to set one off it has too many circuits to go through to be able too deploy alone without the other one without a known cause.
#3
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The only thing that comes to mind is a shorted wire. I would start looking around under the dash and the steering column for and sign that something was changed. The wires should be in a bright yellow cover. Look to see if this has been tampered with, or perhaps been rubbing.
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