Evening all,

My stationary car (I wasn’t in it) was reversed into at work the other day.

The front bumper is totalled and the bonnet appears to have been pushed back about an inch.

The car was pushed about a meter backwards up and over a curb so I assume (?) it was hit at a fair speed.

Now the puzzling bit, to me anyway, is that all four of the electric windows came down. Is this a safety feature or more likely damage to the wiring? The car has parking sensors so I know there is wiring in the bumper.

I assumed at the time it was a feature to allow easy escape in the event of a collision.

It’s been puzzling me for days.

I really can’t find any information on this. Nothing in the Vauxhall book either.

All the RTC’s I’ve been to I’ve never seen it.

Never heard of it. Our land rover used to wind the back window if the power was disconnected and reconnected.

Hmmmmm, I hope it’s something they check then.

I’m really worried they will just look at the front end damage and not assess the whole car.

You said Vauxhall, so GM. Our Saab has GM electrics and the windows do random things often enough. Park, lock, come back next morning and 1 window open – that sort of thing.

Always happens when someone has disconnected the battery for whatever reason. It may be the shunt damaged the connection to the battery and it is a response to that. Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I have learned is that GM electrics are more random than wives.

Did the airbag(s) deploy? They should have done by the sounds of it. Bizarre electrics if not.

Ah, ok that makes sense.

We only had the car 5 weeks and this happens.

I really hope they check the car for alignment issues. The bumper went in and back a good 5 inches.

That’s what confused me hora. I thought for sure the airbags would have gone off but they hadn’t,

Maybe this?

GM airbag problem

I’d push for a write-off.

hora – Member

Did the airbag(s) deploy? They should have done by the sounds of it. Bizarre electrics if not.

Presumably the car was stationary, locked , engine off and without the keys in the ignition?

I don’t think I’d want the airbags in my car firing in that state, adding to an already high repair bill.

I’m not sure, but I don’t think the airbags fire if the seatbelt isn’t fastened as this can cause more injury.
Also, if there is no occupant detected, a passenger for example, why fire the passenger side airbag?

EDIT – what car is it? I know certain cars with framless windows (convertibles for example) drop the window a tiny amount when you open them to allow them to clear the roofline. Did the windows drop completely or just an inch or so?

I’d just call a Vauxhall dealer and find out if it’s supposed to drop the windows or not in a collision.

It’s a 12 plate Astra SRI.

I’d not thought about how the airbags work in a vacant car.

Thanks for that, I’ll go ring.

Astra’s used to have a feature where you could wind all the windows down by pressing and holding the unlock button on the key fob. However due to some fault people would come back to their cars and find all the windows had wound down.

I believe a software update for the car solved this problem by disabling this feature. It might be the case that your car still has this feature enabled and that it was coincidence it happened at the same time.

I don’t think the airbags fire if the seatbelt isn’t fastened

That’s exactly when I’d most want the airbags to fire, after all they became widespread partly because Americans wouldn’t use seatbelts. However, I wouldn’t expect them to fire with the ignition off.

Astra’s used to have a feature where you could wind all the windows down by pressing and holding the unlock button on the key fob.

My 1991 Cavalier used to do that too (and close with the Lock button). Was quite handy in summer.

There was a rumour around the same time that the central locking was designed to trip in the event of a front-end collision. Cue lots of alleged car break-ins by striking the front towing eye with a sledgehammer. Whether or not that actually happened or was an urban myth, I don’t know.