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Airbag · 7 owner reports

Airbag inflator rupture on the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500

3 crashes 3 injuries 6 of the 7 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 7
With an odometer reading 5
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 20%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 6
Typical repair $0–$0
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 37th

When airbag inflator rupture gets reported

There are 7 reports of airbag inflator rupture on the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 80,000 miles. It is the 37th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 5 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 44,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 3 a crash and 3 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $0–$0 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2018, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 190,000 miles.

By volume the 2008 carries the most reports, with 350; the 2015 has 7. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

While on a dirt road driving at a slow speed, the side curtain airbags deployed. The vehicle did not hit anything and no other damage occurred. Gm sent a 3rd party to evaluate the vehicle and declared the warranty void since we had installed a 4" lift kit. There is currently a recall for takata airbags on this particular truck but gm says this is unrelated. This vehicle was purchased new in march of 2016 and had 5089 miles when this incident occurred. How can gm deny this claim. Shouldn't they have to prove that the lift kit caused the deployment if that is their reason for denial? No where in the warranty information does it state installing a lift kit can cause the side air bags to deploy. No where on the information provided from the lift kit manufacturer does it state your warranty could be void if you install the kit. This isn't right. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

5,089 miles NHTSA complaint 1319266 filed 2016-09-20

Takata recall-I was in a wreck 12-24-2017 and I was hit from behind. The bed of my truck was hit so hard by a distracted driver while I was at a stop light, that it twisted up and hit the cab of the truck. My airbags never deployed and my seatbelt never locked up. I am severely injured and am still seeking treatment for my injuries. It was over $11,000 in damages. The truck now down shifts and it sounds likie the bottom is dropping out. It also shakes when at highway speed.

44,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1454266 filed 2018-03-13

Takata recall-I was in a wreck 12-24-2017 and I was hit from behind. The bed of my truck was hit so hard by a distracted driver while I was at a stop light, that it twisted up and hit the cab of the truck. My airbags never deployed and my seatbelt never locked up. I am severely injured and am still seeking treatment for my injuries. It was over $11,000 in damages. The truck now down shifts and it sounds likie the bottom is dropping out. It also shakes when at highway speed.

44,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1454267 filed 2018-03-13

Also reported on the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500

Other brake problem

259 reports median 55k

Other steering problem

99 reports median 49k

Other electrical problem

98 reports median 51k

Other powertrain problem

70 reports median 38k

Other engine problem

56 reports median 51k

Air conditioning failure

50 reports median 64k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 7 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 7 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does airbag inflator rupture happen on the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500?

Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is airbag inflator rupture on the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500?

7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed