Nissan Recalls 3.5 Million Cars for Airbag Woes
If you drive a late-model Nissan, odds are you’re affected.
Nissan is recalling more than 3.5 million cars, vans, and SUVs built over the last five years for a safety flaw that could keep the airbags from deploying correctly, the company announced on April 29. Nearly 3.2 million of the affected vehicles are located in the United States, according to the carmaker.
This is Nissan's fourth recall in the last four years tied to the so-called "occupant classification systems" that are used to determine whether the airbag should be deployed in a crash. According to Nissan, the affected vehicles suffer from a faulty passenger side air bag seat sensor that could under-report the weight of the occupant. This, in turn, could lead the car to believe the occupant was a child, thus causing the airbag not to deploy in the event of some accidents. The car maker says no fatalities have been linked to the fault, but three injuries have been reported so far.
The recall affects examples of the Nissan Altima, Leaf, Maxima, Sentra, Pathfinder, Murano, Rogue, NV200, and NV Taxi built between the 2013 and 2017 model years. (That means the entire NYC Taxi of Tomorrow fleet is affected, for what that's worth to you.) It also affects the Infiniti JX35/QX60 and the Q50 from those model years, as well as the 2013-2017 Chevy City Express van, which is effectively a rebadged NV200.
The news does not seem to be connected to the ever-expanding Takata airbag scandal, which has affected tens of millions of cars across the globe. That recall, spurred by the discovery that improperly-manufactured airbag inflators could cause the bags to deploy without warning, has been linked to at least 10 deaths and more than 100 injuries, and is believed to involve as many as 85 million vehicles in the U.S.
