You expect your air bags to protect you from injury during an accident. He hopes to be able to use his visor to protect his eyes from the bright glare of the sun. However, in some vehicles, the combination of deploying airbags and sun visors in use can have dangerous consequences, including blinding you. This page describes those hazards in some of those vehicles.
The accident
A young man was driving a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse in rural Texas. As the sun was setting on the horizon, the passenger had her visor down to shield her eyes from it. As the car slowly turned into a Little League parking lot, its left front wheel hit a small post in the center of the driveway that had been obscured by dust kicked up by other cars. Despite the low speed, and despite the lack of damage to the front bumper or front end, the airbags deployed.
When the passenger air bag deployed, it slammed into the passenger visor (sun visor), shattering it and sending it airborne. As a result, our client was hit in the face and blinded in one eye. The sun visor remained attached to the car with just a strand of wire, as the air bag detached it from its attachments.
The force of the deploying airbag was so strong that it ripped a serrated metal insert inside the visor and pierced through the visor’s plastic shell. The force was also strong enough to break the vanity mirror that was part of the visor.
Given this dangerous interaction between the airbag and the visor, and given the devastating injury it caused, it is not surprising that there was blood on the surface of the airbag.
our tests
To determine if the passenger airbag was designed to allow the visor to be ripped off during deployment when the visor was in use, we tested another 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse at a separate airbag test facility. For testing, we use real-time video cameras and very sophisticated high-speed cameras. This high-speed video of the test allowed us to capture the interaction between the passenger airbag and sun visor in great detail, clearly documenting how the airbag tears the sun visor off of its attachments.
In each of our tests, the passenger airbag slammed into the visor, ripping it from its attachments and feeling it fly through the car’s cabin, where it could pose a hazard to passengers.
Although this accident, and the test we conducted, was in a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, other cars are also in the same danger. For example, our investigation has revealed that the following cars sold in the United States use the same or substantially similar passenger airbags and sunshades as those we tested that demonstrated the hazard:
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse
2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder
or 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Dodge Stratus
or 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Chrysler Sebring
Other cars may use different airbags or different sun visors, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re safe. For example, some other vehicles may also have a passenger airbag that deploys upward along the windshield and can hit a visor that is in use. At the same time, some other vehicles may have sun visors that are not specifically designed to stay together after being hit by an air bag.