Seat belt or retractor failure on the 2015 Kia Soul
10 crashes 1 fire 6 injuries 17 of the 20 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.
When seat belt or retractor failure gets reported
Owners of the 2015 Kia Soul report seat belt or retractor failure at a median of 70,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 90,000 miles, from 11 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 82,000 miles. It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 10,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 140,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 127,989 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
36% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,500 miles | 20,947 miles | 69,000 miles | 88,500 miles | 138,489 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, 10 a crash, 1 a fire and 6 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 $200–$900 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.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2010, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2015 at 70,000 miles.
By volume the 2015 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
After buckling the seat belt on the front passenger seat and going down the road if you try to lean forward one finds that the seat belt is locked and will not permit any movement you have to release the seat belt and then return it to its parked position and then pull it back out again. Once that has been done you can move forward or pull on the belt only once before it locks up again. I feel very unsafe when the seat belt does this because I feel that in a serious accident one might not be able to release the seat belt if there was a lot of tension on the belt from its own tightening. One should be free to lean forward to open the glove compartment or turn to attend to matters in the back seats. I have actually simulated a scenario where there was extreme tension on the belt from pushing back in my seat and tightening the belt by pushing the belt back up over my shoulder and when I tried to release the belt it was so hard to press the release button that I had to ask my wife to get a rubber mallet and a long screwdriver so that I could hit the release button with the screw driver against the release button. It finally di…
Tl* the contact owns a 2015 kia soul. The contact stated that while driving at 65 MPH, the contact crashed into an eighteen wheeler and the air bags failed to deploy. The contact sustain back injuries that required medical attention. A police report was filed. The vehicle was towed to a collision lot where the body of the vehicle was repaired. In addition the contact stated that the seat belt failed to disengage. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The approximated failure mileage was 10,500. Updated 06/29/16*lj *tr
Tl* the contact owns a 2015 kia soul. The contact stated that while driving at 65 MPH, the contact crashed into an eighteen wheeler and the air bags failed to deploy. The contact sustain back injuries that required medical attention. A police report was filed. The vehicle was towed to a collision lot where the body of the vehicle was repaired. In addition the contact stated that the seat belt failed to disengage. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The approximated failure mileage was 10,500. Updated 06/29/16*lj *tr
Also reported on the 2015 Kia Soul
Other engine problem
Catalytic converter failure
Excessive oil consumption
Other fuel system problem
Overheating
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 20 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 seat belt or retractor failure happen on the 2015 Kia Soul?
Across 11 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 90,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is seat belt or retractor failure on the 2015 Kia Soul?
20 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 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