Phonorkus

Our 2007 odyssey was hit on the driver side front tire when a drunk driver ran a red light. The curtain airbag protected the two 8 year old girls on the left Sid of the car (middle and rear row), but the driver (my wife) struck her head on the driver side window prior to the airbag deploying. Her head actually ended up between the window and the airbag. The crash impact spun the car about 120 degrees so it was moving faster at the front of the car. My assumption is that the speed was too fast for the airbag in the front, but fast enough for the back. Does anyone know how to find out the effective speed for side curtain airbag deployment? I'm thinking that it may be an indication of just how fast the drunk driver was going when he ran the red light.

On a Side note - the car performed great in the accident. The car is totaled, but the three girls in the back walked away without injury (but incredibly frightened) and the driver has a concussion, broken finger, cut on the head an bruises (after seeing the damage to th car, it's amazing that's all that happened)

We'll be replacing our trusted odyssey with ( drum roll...) another odyssey.

94EG8

Because there was no IIHS test for this sort of impact until very recently (within the last year IIRC) most manufactures didn't really worry a lot if an airbag would deploy in this type of an accident. Or more importantly how an occupant would fair in the event of this type of crash.

For what it's worth the corresponding test is a small overlap crash test and when the IIHS first started doing them most cars were failing them horribly. Honda was one of the few companies that had any models that did well from what I recall.