Originally posted by OffroadX:
How could a stronger bumper cause an airbag to not deploy? If anything, a stronger bumper would transmit a STRONGER crash pulse to the sensor, making it MORE likely to fire. The problem would be that it would fire in milder impacts than usual, perhaps in something like a fender-bender (as an example, but I doubt it) which would result in a much more expensive repair.
Yes, it might cause the airbags to fire a bit sooner than they normally would as well, there's a chance the airbag might not still be "fully" inflated by the time you come in contact with it, but I doubt this is really an issue.
Brent
For some reason I had always assumed that meal had to bend for the airbag sensors to go off... like maybe the thing went open-circuit when it got destroyed - indicating a problem to the control computer.
Now that I think about it a little (and did a quick google search), they are probably just accelerometers (as you suggest) that indicate a crash long before they get destroyed (if at all)... unless there is a specific shock frequency caused by crunching metal that would be absent (not likely).
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