Toyota Corolla - Airbag

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Fri 18 Nov 2011 23:08
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - Ernied

A large notice on my sunvisor tell's me that the airbag system must be checked and tested after 10yrs. What will happen if it isn't checked and tested ?

Edited by Ernied on 18/11/2011 at 23:13

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Sat 19 Nov 2011 01:50
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - leef
It might not work... and if you crash, your face *might* smash into the steering wheel/window and not the airbag.... When you get it serviced get it checked, shouldn't cost much. If it needs anything, Sesnsor modules cost about 25 quid on ebay, airbags from a tenner upwards.
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Sat 19 Nov 2011 22:57
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - Ernied

So could the thing go off unwantedly due to a lack of maintenance.

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Sat 19 Nov 2011 23:11
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - bathtub tom

Most unlikely, there's too many fail-safes. More likely to fail when needed, if that's such a bad thing. We all survived before the damn things were enforced upon us because the yanks were too lazy to wear seatbelts.

I will admit they can prevent the driver from 'nutting' the steering wheel, however, look at this footage from about forty seconds in. I can see no evidence of the grey car's driver's air-bag.

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Mon 21 Nov 2011 12:31
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - TeeCee

I'm sure I recall seeing an article recently saying that most manufacturer's had descoped this inspection / test.

The reason? When airbags were first fitted, nobody was really sure about the long-term reliability and 10 years was deemed a good enough "wet finger in the air" time to check.

Move on and as no test of old bag assemblies have thrown up a failing one, it's not being done any more. Hardly suprising really, the electronic trigger is self-checked (which is what the warning light on the dash indicates). The bag assembly is a bag(!) and a pyro pack. The only possible failure was degradation of the pyro pack over time, which has proven to be an unfounded concern.

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Tue 22 Nov 2011 00:15
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - Ernied

Thanks for the replies. For many years I thought that if an airbag equipped steering wheel was jarred or knocked, it would deploy 'the bag'. I've never been comfortable driving knowing that right in front of me is an exploding steering wheel. And I still feel a sense of unease whan I see the 'Airbag system ' information on the steering wheel padding.

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Tue 22 Nov 2011 08:41
Toyota Corolla - Airbag - TeeCee

It makes "thumbs outside wheel" de rigeur (not that it shouldn't be anyway).

A colleague's wife had a very nasty shunt a few years back. The airbag deployed. Her only notable injuries were one badly sprained and one slightly broken thumb, from the airbag forcing her arms sideways while her thumbs were inside the wheel rim.

As she went from about 50mph to zero on something very solid (a truck's chassis), I suspect that without the bag it would have been rather worse.

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