How awful.
I see small kids in front of airbags a lot around here - kids so tiny and young they should still be in boosters. It really upsets me, probably moreso because I stopped to see if anyone needed help after there was a collision and there was a young girl maybe 7, who had been in the front passenger seat of a minivan that had airbags deploy.
The paramedics were obviously angry with the dad for having had his dd in the front seat. Dad & the girl had both left the vehicle after the collision and gone to sit on the side of the road, so no obvious serious injuries (I know people can walk around with big injuries, so that's why I say obvious,) but the paramedics immediately focused on the girl and started assessing her specifically for airbag related injuries as soon as they arrived & found out she'd been in the front seat. I'm hoping that dad was scared enough he won't put his young kids in front again, and that the girl was ok. One of those things I'll never know.
I am 4 11.
I so do not want to hear that.
Hopefully our smart airbags will make the right choice if we are ever in an accident.
I am pretty sure when I am driving that it would not go off as it knows I am too close to the steering wheel. Course then I would just smack into the steering wheel. And that is not good either.
I hope that in the end she gets her hearing back and recovers most of her eyesight.
I'm fairly certain (99%, but there is that 1% room for error, so someone correct me if I'm wrong,) that driver airbags do not disable regardless of weight of person in the seat. The driver airbag is always active, but the dual stage is meant to control the force of release - lower force impacts and higher force impacts are handled differently by the system that releases the airbag.
Adults who can't have 29cm's of clearance between the steering wheel and the vehicle when driving may want to evaluate the risks of having the airbags disabled vs. the close proximity they are to them if they were involved in a collision that caused them to deploy. The risk would definitely be evaluated differently for a driver who has a fist worth of room vs. one who has say 26cm's... and in Canada anyways, you have to get medical documentation and then get permission to have the airbag disabled, so it's not a simple process.
We were taught in class that airbags decrease fatality and serious injury by approximately 5%, but I'm not sure if that percentage changes based on the size of person driving the vehicle. In all honesty, I'd be inclined to look at vehicle modifications done by a company familiar with mobility issues, in order to extend the brake/gas pedals, and change the position you were sitting in the vehicle. (I know there are approved seat changes that can boost people higher.) My guess would be that the airbag is a greater risk than the risk of hitting the steering wheel, but it's nothing more than a guess.
(This might be a good topic to start a discussion on in a separate thread, as I'm sure that there are lots of people affected by this issue.)