1. A Failure to Launch
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2. A vehicle equipped with a driver’s airbag has been involved in a collision and the driver has died of head trauma.
You are the expert witness hired by the family to determine if anything related to the airbag mechanism failed and caused this fatality.
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3. Be sure to take excellent team notes!
Clues are still being gathered and will be shared as they become available…
Be sure to take excellent team notes!

4. What happened?
The installation of driver and passenger airbags in automobiles has greatly decreased fatalities in automobile accidents over the past 50 years.
However, in this case, the driver’s airbag is found intact and deflated, suggesting the airbag deployed from the steering wheel as intended. The driver died in the accident and the cause of death is severe head trauma.
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5. Let’s brainstorm….
How could the driver die of head trauma if the car was equipped with a driver’s airbag?

6. What do we know? Here’s what we know from preliminary police reports:
The car is an older model that uses sodium azide as the principal gas generant in the airbag.
The airbag has been inspected. It appears to have deployed properly.
The deceleration sensor that produces the electrical impulse to trigger the sodium azide reaction has been inspected, it is working order and appears to have functioned properly.

7. More clues are in!
White powder residue has been found in the car near the site of the driver and the airbag. Could the white powder be residual sodium azide? Sodium azide is toxic!
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8. What is the white powder?
Time to go to work….
What is the white powder?