In certain crashes, such as override/underride accidents, the airbag is sometimes late to deploy. In this type of case, ARCCA accident reconstruction engineers, crashworthiness engineers and biomechanics may be involved.
As an example, in one incident the front passenger suffered serious airbag preventable injuries. The reconstructionist performed a site and vehicle inspection to gather appropriate data and also reviewed available black box data, such as crash pulse and seat belt use. Additionally, using EDCRASH, the reconstructionist verified crash parameters including delta–V. Given this information, he analyzed the crash onset parameters to the airbag deployment design criteria to see if the airbag performed as designed. The biomechanist inspected the forensic marks in the vehicle to evaluate the mechanism of the injuries.
When the United States Congress was investigating the issue of Children and Airbags, ARCCA experts were called upon by both the House and the Senate to provide testimony.