PLEASE READ...very important for element owners!!!!
Hi all,
Had a scary thing happen the other day. While driving home from work on a nice smooth So. Cal freeway on a nice sunny day, the drivers side, side airbag just decided to deploy! As anyone who has ever been in an accident can tell you, It's quite a ruckus when these let loose! My ears where ringing and my eyes burning but I was able to keep the car under control and avoided any further damages to my self or others...Pretty lucky I think!
I pull over and have a look at the car and think, where's the bullet holes? Everything looks just fine...no damages to anything but the drivers side seat which has the seam blown out and this little blue bag a little bigger than a sock dangling down to the side. I took a look at my upper arm and noticed a pretty healthy welt comming up where the bag had smacked me on the way out. Still, pretty lucky I think...
Long story short, I took it to the dealer. After 2 days of "looking at the car", they determined it was my fault and that I hit or ran over something that hit the sensor under the car causing the bag to deploy and either my self or my insurance would be paying the $980 it would cost to repair the 6 month old car.
Please understand this is about the safety issue not the $980. I have had the car since it had 4 miles on it and have never hit or been hit by anything other than a rock the size of a marble that broke my windshield. I've never run over anything either. Let me ask this, If this sensor is so succeptable to being hit , why is it under the car of all places? Seems like a poor choice to me.
Anyway, after the dealership told me I was on my own, I started doing a little research on some of the popular Element sites like this one, hondasuv.com and also the NHTSA site. I found there had been several of these accidental deployments and almost all had the exact same response from the dealer. What bothered me most was that only 2 of the incidents where reported to the NHTSA!
The NHTSA is the government agency that keeps info on these sort of defects and if enough of them get reported they'll do an investigation and if it is warranted will force the manufacturer to fix the problem through a recall! The catch is...People have to report the problem to the NHTSA! No report, no repairs and the problem never gets fixed. It's very simple to report a problem...just go tohttp://www.safercar.gov/ and click on "report a problem.
Anyway, if any of you have had this problem or know any of the other Element owners who have, please let me know or point them to the NHTSA site to fillout a report. You can drop me a note here or e-mail it to me at phil2000@pacbell.net. It's my hope we can get this repaired for all of us before it causes someone to be seriously injured or killed.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Who knows maybe we can save a few lives here for nothing more than the time to fill out a report!
Hi all,
Had a scary thing happen the other day. While driving home from work on a nice smooth So. Cal freeway on a nice sunny day, the drivers side, side airbag just decided to deploy! As anyone who has ever been in an accident can tell you, It's quite a ruckus when these let loose! My ears where ringing and my eyes burning but I was able to keep the car under control and avoided any further damages to my self or others...Pretty lucky I think!
I pull over and have a look at the car and think, where's the bullet holes? Everything looks just fine...no damages to anything but the drivers side seat which has the seam blown out and this little blue bag a little bigger than a sock dangling down to the side. I took a look at my upper arm and noticed a pretty healthy welt comming up where the bag had smacked me on the way out. Still, pretty lucky I think...
Long story short, I took it to the dealer. After 2 days of "looking at the car", they determined it was my fault and that I hit or ran over something that hit the sensor under the car causing the bag to deploy and either my self or my insurance would be paying the $980 it would cost to repair the 6 month old car.
Please understand this is about the safety issue not the $980. I have had the car since it had 4 miles on it and have never hit or been hit by anything other than a rock the size of a marble that broke my windshield. I've never run over anything either. Let me ask this, If this sensor is so succeptable to being hit , why is it under the car of all places? Seems like a poor choice to me.
Anyway, after the dealership told me I was on my own, I started doing a little research on some of the popular Element sites like this one, hondasuv.com and also the NHTSA site. I found there had been several of these accidental deployments and almost all had the exact same response from the dealer. What bothered me most was that only 2 of the incidents where reported to the NHTSA!
The NHTSA is the government agency that keeps info on these sort of defects and if enough of them get reported they'll do an investigation and if it is warranted will force the manufacturer to fix the problem through a recall! The catch is...People have to report the problem to the NHTSA! No report, no repairs and the problem never gets fixed. It's very simple to report a problem...just go tohttp://www.safercar.gov/ and click on "report a problem.
Anyway, if any of you have had this problem or know any of the other Element owners who have, please let me know or point them to the NHTSA site to fillout a report. You can drop me a note here or e-mail it to me at phil2000@pacbell.net. It's my hope we can get this repaired for all of us before it causes someone to be seriously injured or killed.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Who knows maybe we can save a few lives here for nothing more than the time to fill out a report!