Self Inflating Airbags

[marvindodgers]

I wonder if this has happened to anyone else. I was driving home last night in my Focus when the passenger side seat airbag deployed completely on it's own. The noise and smoke caused me to pull into the curb super quick and I unfortunately caught the alloys on the curb. Fortunately I was travelling alone or I would have a casualty on my hands as well as a damaged car. After letting the smoke clear (and my hearing return to some semblance of normality) I drove to my local Ford dealer expecting a concerned attitude and the car be repaired under warranty as soon as possible. Unfortunately the attitude was that I was clearly a liar and had driven into the curb, which had then fired the airbag.
Has anyone had a spontaneous airbag deploy whilst driving along and what is it that causes side airbags to fire? There is clearly nothing wrong with the car and it clearly has not been involved in an accident, yet I am looking at a very big bill.

>> Edited by marvindodgers on Wednesday 10th May 14:38

[t0ny99]

marvindodgers said:

I wonder if this has happened to anyone else. I was driving home last night in my Focus when the passenger side seat airbag deployed completely on it's own. The noise and smoke caused me to pull into the curb super quick and I unfortunately caught the alloys on the curb. Fortunately I was travelling alone or I would have a casualty on my hands as well as a damaged car. After letting the smoke clear (and my hearing return to some semblance of normality) I drove to my local Ford dealer expecting a concerned attitude and the car be repaired under warranty as soon as possible. Unfortunately the attitude was that I was clearly a liar and had driven into the curb, which had then fired the airbag. Has anyone had a spontaneous airbag deploy whilst driving along and what is it that causes side airbags to fire? There is clearly nothing wrong with the car and it clearly has not been involved in an accident, yet I am looking at a very big bill.

MD, my first observation would be to post this in General Gassing, where it will get a wider audience. Secondly, there is no way that driving into a curb should fire the airbags and, thirdly, if it WAS then ALL airbags would have gone off.

Ford (at dealer level and above) should take this very seriously...

[marvindodgers]

Thanks for your comments, I too would have thought that all airbags would fire if there was going to be an impact. Could you advise me as to how to move the message to a different forum as I'm a bit new to this.

[CombeMarshal]

You should have fired it back at ford and said you want all the other Bags changing as they didn't go off!!
I'd kick up a real fuss, try doing it on a saturday when they are bussiest, Oh and be sure to get a new wheel and tyre to and allignemnt check

[mattchiz]

I've had EXACTLY the same problem with my 05 Focus


It happend In April and like yourself, Ford are stonewalling me claiming that I must have struck something and that is what triggered the airbag deployment.

When It happened I thought i must have hit a block of concrete or something but when i got out of the car there was absolutely zero damage. I was expecting to see the front bumper hanging off or the wheel/suspension to be damaged

but no nothing

I'm currently involved in sending letters back and forth to Ford Customer services as theres no way I'm spending the £450 plus labour or losing the No claims on my insurance over it.

I recommend you contact them, surely with two (and possibly more) instances of it occuring it will highlight the problem to them more than one.


Their Address

Customer relations centre
PO box 25149
Glasgow
G2 4XF


Matt

[CombeMarshal]

As I said, if only the one airbag went off there must have been a fault!

[minimods]

Also there is a pressure sensor in the seat. The passenger airbag should only ever go off if somebody is sitting in the seat and as the poster above says just one airbag would not deploy if the car detected a crash.

[Mr.Cerbera]

Sorry, with all this ambiguous terminology going on , I just couldn't resist !