Any collision experts?

I was in a head on collision in which i was stopped. I had started making a left turn at 5 mph and a car coming in the opposite came barrelling through,possibly running a yellow light. My right front was caved and in the front of the car bent right towards the driver's side if you are looking at the front of the vehicle. The other driver was driving a toyota solara and had minimal damage to the right left front bumper and headlight. My airbag deployed and theirs did not. The body shop i went to estimated that the other car hit me from 35-40 mph and veered off simultaneously,accounting for such minimal damage to their car. Anyone know at what point airbags deploy? Mine was a 1994 saturn and theirs an unknown sol

The airbags are deployed when the shock sensors detect an acceleration or decelration above a certain number of Gs. Since your car was stopped and was hit, the reaction caused your airbags to deploy because it sensed a significant, instant acceleration force backwards.

However, for the other driver, he is travelling at significant speed and thus carries alot of forward momentum in that direction. To change that direction significantly would require alot of force. However, since to his car it was basically a glancing blow, the deceleration he would have experienced was probably not enough to cause deplyment, most of it would have simply gone to changing his direction somewhat. He may have lost some speed, but the loss was not severe or fast enough to cause deployment. One would have to do the vector math to determine the acting and reacting forces.