On Nov 18, 2004, at 7:23 PM, Haden, Bruce wrote:
> Have there been any incidents of air-bag deployment while the driver
> was
> wearing a helmet?
> Which kind of helmet?
> What happened?
Yes. Several years ago a local autocross was held on a race track
with cones to break up the straights and otherwise keep the speeds
down. There was a freak incident where a Porsche got sideways and then
launched itself into the woods well off the track. The driver's airbag
did deploy.
To the best of my memory the driver was wearing an open faced helmet
and suffered one minor cut/scratch on their face (cheek), possibly from
the plastic sun visor of their helmet. They may also have had some
bruising from their seatbelt, but I am not certain about that. I do
know that the driver was walking and talking once back in the paddock,
with a minor case of shakes. The driver's worst injury, as I recall,
was a knock on their leg that was painful but far from serious.
The car took down several smaller (>3 inches in diameter) saplings
before it came to rest, missing several much more substantial trees in
the process. Once extracted from the woods (not an easy operation, but
the wrecker driver did a nice job), the car would start and was
drivable (long enough to get it up on the trailer to get it 'home'),
but was losing fluid from damage to the radiators. The damage would
have totaled a lesser car, but this one was repaired and still has the
same owner today.
There have been other accidents in the local region over the last 7
years where airbags could have deployed, but this was the only one I
witnessed.
David
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