Camaro ZL1 Airbags Deploy at Track…without a Crash
When bouncing over a curb mid-turn, ZL1 driver gets a big surprise.
This video showed up on Reddit recently, and it’s quite sobering. The basic issue is that high-performance cars are pulling more and more g-forces through corners and the crash detection systems are set for the road. As this ZL1 Camaro runs over the curb at speed, the slight lift at one side, along with the speed and impact, and caused the computer to fire the side airbags thinking it was about to have a rollover.
Now, being more safe than sorry is a noble sentiment but there is an issue here when cars are designed to be driven normally on the road and rinsed out at the track. Having to have airbags replaced is an expensive business, and there’s a huge safety issue. The equivalent sound of a gunshot firing off in a drivers ear is quite a distracting, and at speed that could easily end up in disaster.
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It’s not the first example of this happening to a Camaro either. In a Jalopnik article from 2011 after a video went viral of a Camaro’s airbag deploying at a track, they reported a GM spokesperson saying it was unusual for this to happen but, “On rollover side curtain bags, the vehicle’s rollover sensing system is looking for a certain set of factors that “predict” a vehicle is going to roll over. The airbag system cannot wait until it is too late to deploy the airbags.”
We understand that, both technically and legally, it’s difficult line to tread for safety. After all, something worse than airbags deploying unnecessarily is airbags not deploying when they are necessary. It appears to be a fine-tuning issue that GM has been aware of and not gotten quite right yet. We’re not specialist safety equipment engineers so we don’t have an answer, but we hope that GM’s people are taking note and trying to work out a way to squeeze out these false positives.
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