my buddy recently got in an accident in his 05 spectra where he hit hard enough to trigger the fuel cutoff switch, but the airbags didnt deploy. The damage on his car is significant enough that everyone who has seen it doesnt understand why they didnt deploy. The airbag light is "ON" on the dash so the computer apparently thinks they were deployed. Anyone know of any problems like this?

The problem most likely was the direction of the impact and the inertia momentum. If these fall outside the parameteres of the manufacturer, the airbag will NOT deploy, but the seat belt pretensioners may have. Check out this blog for more details....
http://blog.airbagsolutions.com/archive/2007/08/15/why-didnt-my-airbag-deploy.aspx