You hope your air bags protect you from injury during an accident. You hope to be able to use your sun visor to protect your eyes from the glare of the sun. However, in some vehicles, the combination of deployed airbags and sun visors in use can have dangerous consequences, even blind you. This page describes those hazards on some of those vehicles.
The accident
A young man was driving a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse in rural Texas. Because the sun was setting over the horizon, the passenger lowered her visor to protect her eyes. As the car turned slowly into a Little League parking lot, its left front wheel hit a small pole in the center of the driveway that had been obscured by dust kicked up by other cars. Despite the low speed, and despite the absence of damage to the front bumper or the front end, the airbags deployed.
When the passenger airbag deployed, it crashed into the passenger’s sun visor (sun visor), breaking it and sending it flying. As a result, our client was hit in the face and was left blind in one eye. The sun visor remained attached to the car by a single strand of wire, as the airbag broke its accessories.
The force of the airbag when deployed was so strong that it tore a ragged metal insert from the inside of the visor through the plastic shell of the visor. 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 sun visor, and given the devastating injury it caused, it is no wonder there was blood on the surface of the airbag.
Our tests
To determine if the passenger airbag was designed to allow the visor to pop off during deployment when the visor was in use, we tested another 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse at an independent airbag test facility. For the test, we used very sophisticated real-time video cameras and high-speed cameras. This high-speed video of the test allowed us to capture the passenger airbag / sun visor interaction in great detail, and clearly document how the airbag removes the sun visor from its accessories.
In each of our tests, the passenger airbag smashed into the sun visor, ripping it from its fittings, and sending it flying through the car’s cabin, where it could pose a hazard to passengers.
Although this accident and the tests we ran were on a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, other cars are also at the same risk. For example, our investigation has revealed that the following automobiles sold in the United States use passenger airbags and sun visors that are the same or substantially similar to those we tested and that demonstrated the hazard:
o 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse
o 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder
o 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Dodge Stratus
o 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 folds up along the windshield that can hit a sunshade that is being used. 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.
