Nissan tells my wife to sit in the BACK SEAT!

[LTLFTcomposite]

I don't understand women and weight fetish. When my wife goes to the doctor and gets on the scale she takes off her shoes and removes her earrings.

Ah, I found a picture of your wife:

We have the information from Flyct that his wife, at 140 lbs, is still too light to force the airbag light to turn on. Are some here suggesting she GAIN weight??? Or just wear bigger earrings????

I'm thinking that Flyct is a very fortunate man with a beautiful wife, and for her safety everyone should be fine with her riding in the backseat for awhile.

The greater safety concern here is Flyct fashioning a crude autopilot with a bungee cord on the steering wheel, setting the cruise control, and climbing in the back seat with her! :lol:

 

[user 10599]

Actually, the front seat with the airbag off may be fine too as long as she wears her seat belt properly.

Airbags hit with the force comparable to a punch from a pro boxer. Many injuries are caused when airbags deploy for crashes that didn't warrant it. In particular for the driver, that has led to many broken wrists. Airbags are most beneficial when the person isn't belted in. In most collisions, unless it is bad enough that the belted in passenger is going to hit the dash or windshield despite being belted in, the benefit isn't as great.

One study (1990's era) summed up airbags as turning the old adage of the sea on its head and made women and children first to be sacrificed to save big, drunk unbelted men. Of course since then, they have added the smart features that attempt to detect occupant weight and turn them off when not likely needed and put stickers to prevent people from putting rear facing child seats in the front seat or failing that, detecting insufficient weight and therefore likely a child improperly in the front seat where the airbag is more dangerous.

But as others have noted, the back seat is usually safer in most instances due to a number of factors.

 

[iluvmacs]

Why is the obvious temporary solution being ignored? Check the light every time you turn on the car with a passenger sitting there. If it's on, turn the car off and back on, and it will very likely be off, and you continue along driving safely. Seems rather easy and IMO preferable to just always sitting in the back seat instead. Our Leaf was doing this once in a while (like once every 2 months), and when I would notice, I would just restart the car, no problem. Our sensor just got replaced a month ago so (hopefully) no worries now. It is, however, pretty dumb that they reprogram the computer to now have the Airbag Off light on when the seat is empty now. I've never seen a car work this way before, and now the amber light being on throws me off every time I drive the car alone .

 

[user 10599]

Why is the obvious temporary solution being ignored? Check the light every time you turn on the car with a passenger sitting there. If it's on, turn the car off and back on, and it will very likely be off, and you continue along driving safely.

Interesting. Does the car sensor only deactivate the airbag when you first turn on the car? Or is it possible it could start on, but then while driving around subsequently decide there isn't enough weight in the seat and then turn it off? I would think the later is more likely as the car could drive around and then drop-off and pickup different passengers. So I suspect the sensor/computer is constantly evaluating. But I can't say the engineering was done that logically so I'm just guessing.

 

[iluvmacs]

Why is the obvious temporary solution being ignored? Check the light every time you turn on the car with a passenger sitting there. If it's on, turn the car off and back on, and it will very likely be off, and you continue along driving safely.

Interesting. Does the car sensor only deactivate the airbag when you first turn on the car? Or is it possible it could start on, but then while driving around subsequently decide there isn't enough weight in the seat and then turn it off? I would think the later is more likely as the car could drive around and then drop-off and pickup different passengers. So I suspect the sensor/computer is constantly evaluating. But I can't say the engineering was done that logically so I'm just guessing.

A fair point, and certainly a possibility, but in my experience I didn't see that occur.

 

[keydiver]

Seems like they should have been able to turn the airbag on full time until they get the sensor replaced instead of keeping the airbag off full time and asking for nobody to sit in the front seat.

I doubt if its that simple. When I had the same issue with my Prius a few years back, I pulled out the service manuals to troubleshoot it. The sensors aren't just simple make/break switches, they are strain sensors, which put out a variable DC voltage to tell the airbag ECU how heavy the person is in the passenger seat. IMO, the only way to rig it might be to read the output voltage of the sensor, figure out what voltage would be necessary to make the ECU happy, and use a resistor to jump between the +5 VDC wire and the sensor output wire to raise the voltage. No shop is going to do that.

 

[mgs333]

It's a little ridiculous how long it's taking to get these parts in. At this rate, my lease will be up (13 months from now) before they fix this issue. It's not like they even have that many cars to get parts for. :roll:

 

[user 10599]

I'm guessing there is no rush. Having issued the recall notice probably gets them off the hook for most of the liability. Now if someone is hurt, it is because they didn't follow the instructions they received from Nissan. So I don't recommend holding your breath for the parts/fix.