Does your Stock car have : "Kill Switch / Turn off Airbags etc." - feature ? if yes Please contribute to this thread.

[Dev_]

I have recently install kill switch for my car, (Sequoia) , as per the garage guy its enough to disable traction and abs. He did not disable the Airbags, he said its separate circuit, he needs more time etc.  My  version Sequoia (GCC) does not come with a traction control switch. After the kill switch its  a major difference in driving in the soft patches. 
My question here is that, how important is to have airbags disabled? 

 

[Frederic]

1 hour ago, Dev_ said:

I have recently install kill switch for my car, (Sequoia) , as per the garage guy its enough to disable traction and abs. He did not disable the Airbags, he said its separate circuit, he needs more time etc.  My  version Sequoia (GCC) does not come with a traction control switch. After the kill switch its  a major difference in driving in the soft patches. 
My question here is that, how important is to have airbags disabled? 

 

There are usually two types of airbags installed in your car:

1. Front airbags (in your steering wheel).

2. Side airbags / curtain airbags / lateral airbags.

 

Airbags are usually being triggered by two possible events, either a heavy impact on the front bumper, or when the car is tilting too much on one side, followed by a quick tilt towards the other side. This is something we do whenever we are ridge riding and crossing over from one side to the other (also called switching).  

Some vehicle brands have very sensitive sensors to detect this kind of tilting, and hence trigger the airbag to go off during your dune-bashing drive. Cars like Ford, Land Rover, GMC, Dodge, Chevy seem to be very prone to this, hence we always advise to disable the airbags.

Ideally, you'd want to keep your frontal airbag activated, as it's there to protect you in case of a nasty nose-dive. Unfortunately, in many 4x4's this fuse is combined with the side airbags, so when deactivating side airbags, your front will also be disabled.

It's up to you to decide if you want to keep your frontal airbag enabled or disabled. It's there to protect you in case of a nosedive or heavy impact from the front side, but when it goes off it will be an expensive repair, or you'll need to cut them out. 

 

[Gaurav]

Good topic @DP1011 to compile this crucial information at one place.

Just to clarify as Fredy already mentioned, we only emphasis and insist on disabling Side Airbags on US and EU origin brands, Japanese manufacturer mastered the side airbag very well and they don't deploy on crisscrossing.

Front airbag is safety requirement, and one should NOT disable it, as it can save your life in case of nasty accident or frontal roll-over. Even on higher level drives, one should not disable front airbag, please.

[DP1011]

@AnasArif from above contributions of @Frederic and @Gaurav , I suppose you now have the answer ( re-confirmation of what we discussed on your first drive:) - no need of disabling Airbags) as you are a proud japenese car owner;)

[Mario Cornejo]

3 hours ago, Gaurav said:

Front airbag is safety requirement, and one should NOT disable it, as it can save your life in case of nasty accident or frontal roll-over. Even on higher level drives, one should not disable front airbag, please.

This is interesting and good to know @Gaurav as I remember I started disconnecting air bags based on a recommendation I got in an IM drive long time ago.  

[Dev_]

This is a very important info about the airbag. I was infact planning on going and getting another switch to disable the front airbag. Good I did not do that. Safety comes first! I think Sequoia has a switch to disable the  side impact airbag as per some blogs. I will check this out and post it here, so that it might help out some others too.

[Gaurav]

17 minutes ago, Mario Cornejo said:

This is interesting and good to know @Gaurav as I remember I started disconnecting air bags based on a recommendation I got in an IM drive long time ago.  

It must be like a Chinese whisper game, when we say disable side airbags, after sometime "side" disappeared and ppl start assuming disable all airbags, lol.

[Frederic]

13 hours ago, Mario Cornejo said:

This is interesting and good to know @Gaurav as I remember I started disconnecting air bags based on a recommendation I got in an IM drive long time ago.  

on your Y61 there are no side airbags i presume, so i agree it's better and safe to leave them activated. 

[Gaurav]

Just to clarify another point on Japanese 4X4 (at least) front airbag won't pop with the nose dive unless the impact reach the crush zone. I had a nasty nose dive at a 50-60 degree angle on LC100 but the airbag didn't pop. After that got the airbag sensor checked and everything was fine, but the impact didn't reach the crush zone and hence airbag sensor didn't fire the signal.

The bottom-line is that front airbags don't deploy with minor front impact unless there is an accident and hence front airbag need is even more imp for off-road

[DP1011]

@Rafey Hashmi I also let u add your inputs on this topic , for Jimny, once u figure out also pls add comments on  why the traction control was turning to "On" on its own at speed > 30 !