Ridgeline Crashworthiness

[rmetzner]

Friday night while taking my son to a friend's, I had the misfortune of encountering a deer. He ran across the road from the right, meeting my RT "dead on". I was traveling about 50 and was probably able to get down to about 30 before the collision. The impact threw him onto the shoulder of the oncoming lane, and he was pronounced dead by the police.

The amazing part was other than a cracked grill and two small cracks in the "tupperware" bumper, the RL sustained no other damage.

What an amazing vehicle !

[colorider]

Glad to hear YOU and your SON are okay!! Deer strikes can be very bad if they come up over the front bumper and into the windshield.

:shock:

[Waterbug]

At 30 mph you should have had some sort of airbag deployment (either front or side). If you didn't, be sure to have your dealer check out the airbag system. The module should tell them your speed at impact and your rate of deceleration/acceleration.

[colorider]

Waterbug wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")At 30 mph you should have had some sort of airbag deployment (either front or side). If you didn't, be sure to have your dealer check out the airbag system. The module should tell them your speed at impact and your rate of deceleration/acceleration.

I don't think hitting a deer is enough to deploy any of the airbags - at least not in any of the hits I have heard about.

[DopplerDon]

Some interesting reading regarding what is involved to determine if an airbag should deploy.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/edr-site/uploads/tkowalick/18ESV-000314.pdf

[Waterbug]

I misread his "dead on" as "head on". A "head On" impact with a deer at 30 mph should launch the airbags (dependant on the weight of the deer of course). On going research is actually focused on proximity and rate of closure not actual impact. The sooner a crash can be detected, the more user friendly the rate of inflation can be. Variable inflation due to anticipated impact and occupant mass are coming too (if not already here, I'm a little out of touch)

[Ridgeline2006]

I'm so glad you survived this one...seems like too many people are seriously injured in crashes with deer. I know when I'm in Wisco I try to be extra cautious to avoid deer. I've known too many people...well, you know 8)

Did you hit a small deer?

[rmetzner]

In the 40 years I've been driving, I've found if you are not daydreaming and on your game, you can avoid a lot of deer. I've had many close encounters, including one that tried to run into my Ranger's passenger door, but this is the first one that didn't get up and walk away.

It didn't have antlers, so it was a doe, but it was fully grown. Like I said, being able to slow to 30 or so must have helped. I know I was in the ABS, and of course I wasn't watching the speedometer.

[Ridgeline2006]

I know what you mean about not day dreaming -- seems like as soon as you let you mind relax, bam! Out of nowhere there's a group of 'em on the side of the road. One of the most dangerous things is to look in directions they are running, that way you don't see the ones following them. A good word of advice is to watch both sides of the road and be ready to hit the brakes, like you did. Congrats on being "on your game" as you called it. 8)

[mark@blinglights]

I love ridgelines wooo!

[Ron in Delaware]

I hit a deer in the left hand lane of the Washington beltway some years ago, while driving through Montgomery County - at 10:00 in the morning. She had to cross three lanes of heavy traffic to get to me! Luckily, at the time I was driving a full sized Chevy conversion van, so it didn't come through the windshield. Still, it cost over $2,500.00 to repair the damage (in 1991 dollars).

My previous car (another Chevy) came with a video that tried to explain how the air bag deployment system worked. It said the system wasn't based on your speed, nor on the size of what you hit. It depended on the vehicle's abrupt change in speed, or what it referred to as Delta-Theta (if I remember correctly). So it's possible that you could hit an animal at a rather high rate of speed without deploying the airbags - providing the impact did not significantly change the speed of your car. At the risk of offending some - if we were talking about golf you might call it "follow through."