Airbag saved life, but leaves a wacky bruise on driver’s arm; check pics

By burning solid propellant, an airbag expands and fills within fractions of a second and at speeds of up to 320 km/h, the airbag moves outward.

Image for representation

The experience of being in a car accident, even a minor one, can be frightening. Although we live in an age where smart safety engineering has reduced the death rate from crashes, injuries are still common. Strange injuries are also more common than you might have thought. 

After Andrea Juarez, a Texas resident who goes by the Twitter handle @pielcanela, was involved in a collision in her Nissan, Juarez took a picture of the unique bruise of Nissan logo on her forearm caused by the driver side airbag exploding. 

Several thousand people have liked and re-tweeted the picture of the gnarly bruise on Twitter in just a day. A particularly intriguing response comes from users who received a near-perfect reproduction of Hyundai's "lazy H" logo on their forearms back in 2016. Several people have very similar marks and injuries on their forearms, and most of them appear in the same area. 

By burning a solid propellant, the airbag expands and fills a thin nylon bag within fractions of a second and moves outward at speeds of up to 320 km/h. It is crucially important that the driver's airbag also deflect the central steering wheel panel, which is usually adorned with a logo or brand mark.

I literally had the same shit happen back in 2016 but with a Hyundai logo pic.twitter.com/sEchqVZj04

— Luis GJ (@lilusage) March 5, 2022

When you consider how common it is for drivers to use one hand to operate the wheel, often with the hand at the top and the forearm near the center, you begin to understand why these bruises are much, much less common than one in a million.