Two likely explanations:

1) The bumper on the car you hit was higher than your bumper. This would concentrate the crash forces into your grill instead of the steel frame that is hidden inside of your plastic bumper cover. It's that steel bumper frame that has to crush to trigger the airbag.

2) You did not have an impact speed of 40. This could be because the other car was also moving when you hit it, or you hit your brakes before impact and slowed down to a speed below the threshold for airbag activation (probably around 20 mph I am guessing).

Didn't even realize a 98 Civic would HAVE airbags(they are a rather bare bones vehicle). On top of that you hit at 40 MPH. Airbags are NOT going to be set off when you go that fast. It would be way too dangerous for the person to have an airbag come shooting out as they are flying toward it at 40 mph.

If you are alive, then you should contact Honda and thank them for designing airbags that worked properly, and may have saved your life by not deploying.

Airbags are not supposed to deploy in every crash like this. If they did, they would kill more drivers than they saved.

Airbags are supposed to deploy in crashes where the driver would die if the airbag did not deploy. If you are alive, then you did not have one of those crashes.

If the airbag did not deploy and you are alive, that means that the airbag did not need to deploy to save your life.

If Honda sees what you have posted here, then you may need to discuss paying them a settlement for unfairly damaging their reputation.

I guess airbag deploys at 60MPH. If your car is second hand you never know if it has been in a accident previously. Plus mostly airbags only deploy if your wearing your seat belt. Get your car check. Maybe the sensor which senses the accident and then deploys the airbag is not working on your car.

not all accidents cause the air bags to deploy

sure you can report it to honda

but don't expect a settlement