* The angle of the impact: A head-on collision at a lower speed will likely deploy airbags more readily than a glancing blow at a higher speed.
* The type of surface the car impacts: Hitting a solid object like a wall will cause more significant deceleration than hitting something more deformable, like another vehicle.
* The car's structure and how it absorbs the impact: The way the Sable's frame and crumple zones deform will influence the rate of deceleration.
* The specific sensor sensitivity: The accelerometer sensors in the 1994 Sable's airbag system had a specific threshold for triggering deployment; this threshold varied from vehicle to vehicle due to manufacturing tolerances.
While some estimates suggest that a head-on collision at around 10-15 mph *might* deploy the airbags in some circumstances, this is a very rough approximation and should not be relied upon. It's possible to deploy them at a lower speed under the right (or wrong) conditions, and it's equally possible they won't deploy at much higher speeds if the impact isn't direct enough.
In short, there's no safe speed to test this. Trying to determine the deployment speed experimentally is extremely dangerous and could result in serious injury or death. The only reliable way to know if the airbags will deploy is through a controlled crash test, and even then, the results wouldn't be fully generalizable to all vehicles of the same model year.
