You are Lucky and I am glad you had the ARB! I am shocked to see that there isn't more damage than pictured from a 75mph impact. Deer will jump which in turn sends then through the windshield...count yourself lucky!
99 + ARB + Deer + 75mph (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter bcripe
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
sleeoffroad
Supporting Vendor
ARB bumpers for the 100 is airbag compliant, so that means they will not affect the deployment of the airbag. 80 Series bumpers are not.
In this case, the bumper did it's work. They are designed to be sacrificial and still allow you drive away when hitting a kangaroo. In this case a deer. Yes, it sucks that they truck got damaged, but the energy has to go somewhere. Better in some crumpled sheet metal and a bumper that flexed vs transmitted into the cab and you internal organs.
I want to hunt where small deer are 200 lbs.
This is a relatively simple conservation of energy problem from physics class. The deer doesn't really belong in the same group as cars, trees, etc. The latter have much greater mass and are much less-movable objects. A 6,000 lb truck traveling at 75 mph has a massive amount of momentum, compared to a stationary but easily moveable 200 lb deer and very little of that momentum is required to launch it with minimal deceleration of the truck. If the airbag sensors are detecting deceleration, there just won't be enough to activiate them. Now if we were talking about an elk, cow or buffalo, that would be a different story.
mcgaskins
SILVER Star
I can only imagine how exponentially worse this situation would have been if the airbags deployed at 75mph. Clearly there was no need for them to deploy due to the impact, so I'm glad the bumper did it's job and the airbags stayed put!
Out of interest... I see some bumpers say "airbag compatible". Given the nature of the sensor and it being based on deceleration off the whole vehicle, how would a non-compatible bumper actually negatively affect airbag deployment?
air bags are only designed to deploy if you DECELERATE enough to trip the sensor.....if you keep moving there is no reason for them to deploy as they would just impede your vision.
air bag compatible bumpers only mean that they will deploy in the same time frame as oem. if not compatible they may deploy a fraction of a second SOONER as the crumple zone is not as evident with our solid aftermarket bumpers.
whitetails are between 70 and 160 lbs for a doe if fully grown.....even if you hit the larger end of that it wont cause your vehicle to come to a stop....unless you hit brakes you wont stop...and you cant hit brakes hard enough to cause airbags to deploy...
expecting airbags to deploy in this situation is unrealistic and not what they are designed to accomplish.
without that bumper that vehicle would likely be totaled at that speed.....or close to it. The hoops are what protected more serious damage...only way the main bumper will help is if deer is down low and you go over it...otherwise they usually flop onto hood or wrap around corner and tear everything up.
Daughter hit a buck leaving school years ago in an old 85 Mercedes sedan diesel....40mph deer did not take DIRECT HIT and ran off....still ruined grill, headlight, front quarter panel, radiator, ac compressor, tie rod, etc...pretty much everything from front to door was messed up including door as it pushed fender into door and misaligned it all. This was with a heavy steel Mercedes with real steel bumpers. Imagine at 75mph...
The bumper did its job...vehicle was driveable, nobody was injured other than deer.....all is good!
it could cause it to go off a fraction of a second faster as the crumple zone would not delay the deceleration amount being read......
it will still go off but will be earlier than with compatible bumper as the bumper is direct to frame with no crumple zone to absorb impact.
I like to say the OTHER CAR is my crumple zone!
That is correct ... the flip side of this is that with some systems (I do not know if Toyota is this way), the airbags will not deploy if the vehicle is standing still.
I had a co-worker who was in a head on collision in his then-new Dodge 2500 4x4 about 10 years ago. His vehicle was at a stand still when an impaired driver hit him head on at ~ 70 MPH in a Chebby truck. The impact was bad enough to tear the Cummins engine from the frame and break the cast iron case of the NV5600 tranny. It messed up his legs pretty badly, but the airbags in his truck did not deploy - the Dodge logic had a speed sensor input and, I believe, the VSS had to indicate 15mph for the decel sensor to be active. Airbags saved the other driver so he could stand trial ....
Trunk Monkey
Moderator
If you're going through insurance, they should replace it all.
I feel sad for the deer !!! poor thing didn't know what hit him/her
Don't you want to know if the deer 'sploded?
Last edited:
You have to really hit something in a Toyota to get the airbags to go off. I've seen cars pretty banged up with the airbags still intact. They are designed that way because they don't want to cause additional damage the the vehicle or occupants. They will only go off if they are truly needed.
I clipped a deer on Blood Mountain last year around 60MPH. The ARB flexed and tweaked the passenger fender, however the ARB didn't actually bent like the OP's. I got a special gift on the front of the grill, I have told a few about this at the ACC ride and had them ballin' on the floor. It's a long story though
jonharis
Adventure Imports
It would depend on the height of the animal and where the impact was. If the impact was low there would have likely been less damage. It looks as though all the damage to the truck is from the bumper impacting the sheet metal, not the deer. You would be out of luck however in a higher impact though with the Slee.
Truck looks good for what happened. And yes, insurance should be paying for a new ARB as well as all body work. If not, switch insurance.
I have to say that this does show the effectiveness of having those protective bars! Good job to ARB!
