The Upside-down Airbag ID

[rmoore]

Here's something I had never thought about before.

We train our crews to identify undeployed airbags in vehicles at crash scenes. We teach them to scan for the airbag IDs in all 13 possible vehicle locations.



This 2000 model year VW Jetta rolled over the other day. The female occupant crawled out as our first engine pulled up. The only working door was the driver's side rear door.

While "scanning" the vehicle for airbags, I discovered the airbag IDs for the seat-mounted units were upside-down. Never thought about having to read these when the vehicle has rolled over. Just something to think about.

Close-up interior shots of the VW are on the two following messages of this thread.

Ron Moore

[rmoore]

Here's my point of view as I approached the driver's side of this Passat.

[rmoore]

Look closely at the outboard edge of the driver's front seatback. See the black airbag ID?



That's all the warning you get that there are loaded airbags in this vehicle. In addition to the two seat airbags, both frontal airbags remained loaded as well.