2006 Cadillac DTS Owner's Manual - Page 67

When Should an Airbag Inflate? {CAUTION: If something is between an occupant and an airbag, the airbag might not inflate properly or it might force the object into that person causing severe injury or even death. The path of an inflating airbag must be kept clear. Do not put anything between an occupant and an airbag, and do not attach or put anything on the steering wheel hub or on or near any other airbag covering. If your vehicle has roof-mounted side impact airbags, never secure anything to the roof of your vehicle by routing the rope or tie-down through any door or window opening. If you do, the path of an inflating airbag will be blocked. Do not let seat covers block the inflation path of a side impact airbag. The path of an inflating airbag must be kept clear. The driver's and right front passenger's frontal airbags are designed to inflate in moderate to severe frontal or near-frontal crashes. But they are designed to inflate only if the impact exceeds a predetermined deployment threshold. Deployment thresholds take into account a variety of desired deployment and non-deployment events and are used to predict how severe a crash is likely to be in time for the airbags to inflate and help restrain the occupants. Whether your frontal airbags will or should deploy is not based on how fast your vehicle is traveling. It depends largely on what you hit, the direction of the impact and how quickly your vehicle slows down. Your vehicle has a "dual stage" driver airbag, which adjusts the restraint according to crash severity using electronic frontal sensor(s) which help the sensing system distinguish between a moderate frontal impact and a more severe frontal impact. The "dual stage" driver airbag inflates to a level less than full deployment for moderate frontal impacts and to a full deployment for more severe frontal impacts. 1-61