[Aditya]

Thanks to Devang Shah for sending this information in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP share page!

I would like to share a shocking incident.

The left side curtain + front seat airbags of my Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara exploded while the car was running without any accident causing a threat to my life. I am a heart patient and have three stents in my heart. I was stuck between the driver seat and seatbelt for a few minutes which caused serious injuries to me and injuries to the hand and head of my colleague who was seated in the front passenger seat. I had handed over the vehicle to Excell Autovista on 18/11/2023 and from then I have been following up (despite resistance) with all senior management of Maruti Nexa and Excell Autovista.

At first, I was given reasons like, “Your car must have been moving at high speed”, "maybe was the car dumped in some big pothole”, or “maybe some football might have hit the front door while the car was running.” Then they said that although there are no visible damages to the car, it seems like an accident. Now we are sending the module for checking to Maruti to know the actual cause. Then, I am getting cut-paste responses. "The airbag module has been sent to Maruti for checking. Do not keep any apprehensions and wait for the result!" In every communication, I am forced to accept there was an accident and I must claim insurance. But how can I accept that ? There was no accident! There are no visible traces of any accident. The best reply I got was, "If the airbags exploded without accident the insurance company will reject your claim and then your point is proved. So claim insurance.

On 28 December i.e. after about 1 month and 10 days, I got a reply:

"This is in regard to alleged apprehension raised regarding airbag deployment in running vehicle. You may please note that as per the inspection done, external damages have been found due to which the airbags have deployed. Request you to not hold any apprehension towards the same and get the said repair work started."

My family and I are die-hard fans of Maruti vehicles. We have used everything from the Maruti 800 to the Grand Vitara. We three brothers brought 3 Grand Vitaras last December. After seeing such a defective product and such service, we all have decided not to use Maruti cars anymore. My brothers have listed their cars for sale now. I had tried for an amicable solution through communicating with Maruti [Mr. Vikrant/Mr. Kartik] and Autovista (Mr. Amitesh, who has not being answering calls after the Maruti mail of 28 December), but I am hurt by the treatment given to me.

In the past, some 17,000+ vehicles have been recalled for defective airbags. I am told that my vehicle is not from the said batch. I can understand. After my incident, my brother’s son got a letter from Nexa to send the car to the service centre for some software update. This too I can understand. I have only request, do rectify this airbag manufacturing defect and save the lives of Indians. It should not happen to anyone else.

Thanks and Regards

Devang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_f3958pkc

The Final Communication:

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line.

[ABHI_1512]

Absolutely horrendous if what OP has mentioned is true. Airbags are meant to be deployed in a running car but on impact and not randomly out of the blue moon. Since a recall has been made already, Suzuki should have resolved the issue through goodwill warranty if not under standard warranty. To find faults with the customer’s version and to say that external damages triggered the airbag deployment is cringeworthy- of course all this holds true only if the OP is correct on his part. Glad that the two gentlemen came out with minor injuries, it could have been so much worse !!

I really doubt if they found any external damages or just made up an external damage as is the wont with many service centers, just to make it look like as the reason behind the airbag deployment. I really don’t understand this petty behaviour from the largest manufacturer of the country and that too for a car that is almost the flagship product right now. What Maruti needs to really find is whether the Vitara was part of the batch which had defective airbag modules.

If not for the defective module, then own up the mistake and replace the defective parts out of goodwill and move on, fighting for mere 50k isn’t worth it, or may be it is, nothing’s impossible for Maruti Suzuki !!

[hrman]

Looks like a serious issue. If the Airbag module failed while driving, Maruti were lax while identifying the defective airbag batches. The OP's car may be amongst the missed batch. All said, MSIL should do a thorough investigation and enable further recalls for replacement.
Just speculation: I can see seat covers which look after market. Could a faulty after market seat cover installation have triggered this?

[scorpian]

This is nothing new.
I am a personal witness to a 2011 sx4 which was standing parked where in the air bags opened.
An engineer from Delhi was deputed to investigate who came by flight sat entire day took different readings with multimeter and found nothing.
The car was lying at the mass where in they pushed hard the customer to claim insurance.
The customer was well off had other cars at his disposal and refused.
In the end maruti did the job and gave him but kept on saying to him we are doing this on good will basis.
The plight of the car which was lying in the showroom for over a month was deplorable.

So yes like I said this has happened before and maruti did try to wash their hands off before as well.

[GTO]

The activation of airbags is really an imperfect science & there are a zillion factors on which they are triggered. Or not, as we have seen in several severe crashes where the airbags didn't open.

Linking to a related thread on a Skoda Octavia (Skoda Octavia airbags deploy after major pothole collision | GoDigit refuses insurance claim). Not airbags, but my Mercedes C220 always unlocked all doors after hitting a big pothole at speed. Asked the dealer and he said the electronics must be thinking its an accident.

[Guna]

May be the cross winds caused the airbags deployment . I can understand some excuse on why the airbags did not deploy (as things can get complex) but airbags getting deployed without a crash?! Maruti/dealer should quickly get in to analysing what went wrong (and immediately provide a standby vehicle to the customer) and replace the entire vehicle eventually.

[self_driven]

Originally Posted by hrman

Just speculation: I can see seat covers which look after market. Could a faulty after market seat cover installation have triggered this?

Alpha variant has these leather covers as OE fitment. If they were after market, Maruti Suzuki would have closed this case the same day it was reported.

[Mystic]

The modern cars are becoming very complex with electronics, sensors, air bags. My Crysta Z even has an 7th air bag for knees. God only knows when these complex machines may fail. It is never fool proof. Even multi million dollar fighter aircraft with state of art equipment, the eject seat may not work for what ever reasons in spite of the quality control is near to perfect.

Now a days, it looks like the automobile companies are reserving a multi billion dollar budget to fight for any eventualities in a legal battle. An individual customer can never win against these giants.

I installed 360 degree camera and a dash cam to my Crysta. The 360 degree cameras are installed at my home in front of me by a person sent by dealer for a brand new car. I was amazed at the level of expertise the person has over Crysta vehicle. He was drawing wires behind the air bags all around the car. He could do it eyes closed but I was in a dilemma if anything can go wrong to a factory fitted airbags. After seeing this, I decided I will never ever do this 360 degree cameras installation on my Jimny with wires pulled behind the air bags.

I personally feel that it is an unfortunate incident and move on in life. The incident of airbags wrong deployment is very rare and it can happen to any modern car. I hope both automakers and insurance companies are empathetic towards customers and help them come over the shock with what ever help they can do instead of harassment using the fine print of legal terms which we might have signed without reading when purchasing the car or the insurance.

[Sidban85]

The only reason a lot of people buy Marutis, even after knowing about their byild quality, is for reliability and good after sales experience.

Here, it looks like Maruti is behaving like a Skoda or Volkswagen dealer.

So, while they will continue to make cars of questionable build quality, their QC and dealership experience seems to be slipping as well.

[RunGaDa]

Never heard of this in the USA. If at all this happens, the law makes it mandatory to recall all cars / batch vehicles. These things will keep happening (sorry for the devil here) unless the customer protection laws are made strong. To the sense that the company must be fined in million $ in addition to recall of all models / batch vehicles.

[PearlJam]

Originally Posted by GTO

The activation of airbags is really an imperfect science & there are a zillion factors on which they are triggered. Or not, as we have seen in several severe crashes where the airbags didn't open.

I think all complaints we generally hear about, are about airbags that should have deployed, but didn't. In that case, as you said, so many factors come into play.

But in this case, it's about airbags deploying even though there was absolutely no logical trigger - which I think is an extremely serious issue. I think the bar is set pretty high before airbags deploy (and that makes sense too - we can't have airbag injuries worse than that from the actual accident).

[darthvader001]

Extremely Sorry to hear about this incident. Feel bad about it and shows how things in India can be less quality.

If the same incident occurred in western countries then people will sue the OEM. Laws protect and support the people (customer). Hence OEMs are very serious about warranty and other incidents.

However the same OEMs take Indian customers for granted because of the "its ok" or "chaltha hai" attitude. This has gotten into our culture and tradition that we cannot do anything.

Expecting Quality in India is difficult. We all are part of it. Because while doing our jobs also we carry the same attitude know. We ourselves also give less quality to our work which is same as what other people also do in their jobs.

Scenario - I as an employee do less quality work but expect better quality from others when I become a Customer to them. Same vice versa. People keep cursing Govt or service centers or banks etc., that they're not working well but they don't introspect themselves how they're working in their jobs. If they do their job properly then they can expect others to do their jobs properly too.

Overall, everyone needs to step up their quality only then India will improve. Otherwise, these incidents keep occurring and we keep talking. Nothing will change for years/decades.

[pranavt]

OP must thank his lucky stars he did not end up causing an accident or worse, running over someone due to the sudden scare. No way anyone would believe him about the airbags opening before the accident. Marutis are now suffering from premature ej-backspace-backspace- deployment

Insane that the dealer is able to blame the owner with a straight face.

[Brumby]

The more the electronics and softwares the more such problems will be experienced.

The above statement is based on my experience working in the marine industry as an engineer.

At one point the marine engineering systems had reached a stage where there were very limited failures in automation systems.

Since the developement of electronics at an unbelievable pace, the automation systems are failing very often. The systems onboard use canbus, profibus, fibre optics, complex PCBs and relays with micro ICs.

At present, we experience failures very often, troubleshooting is complex & time consuming, and manual operation of equipment is either impossible or not advised by the makers. Sometimes even makers take considrable time to troubleshoot and provide solutions.

The sensors used can fail, and there are limited safeguards against sensor failures

The softwares incorporate safety only to an extent the team of developers can think what can go wrong.

The makers should owe up all such failures and must take corrective actions, but that's where the problems start with businesses.

I have dealt with maruti Suzuki for issues which were related to quality and they kept on passing it to the dealers rather than acknowledging it. They did it to an extent where it was frustrating and family life too was getting affected. That's the point I let it go.

All manufacturers will do that. Never ever have I come across a situation where an individual claims for warranty and the dealers/makers happily honour it. The reasons given by them sometimes make you wonder how is it even remotely related to what is being claimed.

For me, if a manufacturer calls the customer saying that since your product warranty is going to expire on so and so date, we will inspect the product and any issues found related to warranty will be addressed/rectified.
This is what says how much does the manufacturer trusts in the quality of the product that is being manufactured.

Cheers.