AtWhatMileage
Airbag · 3 owner reports

Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault on the 2014 Nissan Leaf

Only 3 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 3
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $300–$1,600
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 5th

When airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault gets reported

There are 3 reports of airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault on the 2014 Nissan Leaf, 3 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 85,000 miles. It is the 5th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 100 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

Putting it right typically runs $300–$1,600 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 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2014, at a median of 100 miles, and latest on the 2011 at 75,000 miles.

By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 10; the 2014 has 3. 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.

Median
  1. 2011 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault 73k
  2. 2012 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault 89k
  3. 2013 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault 30k
  4. 2014 (this one) 100
  5. 2015 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault 6k
  6. 2017 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
    no odometer readings given
    —
  7. 2018 Nissan Leaf airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
    no odometer readings given
    —

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.

Front passenger air bag off light comes on even with a 150lb passenger sitting in the seat. This happened multiple times. Dealer identified it as a code dtc b00a0-00 stored in airbag system, with occupant sensor having abnormal voltage. *tr

5,506 miles NHTSA complaint 1098929 filed 2014-08-18

There is an air bag light that illuminates when there is weight on the passenger seat but the air bag will not be deployed, maybe because the vehicle thinks there is a dog, small child, or inanimate object sitting in the seat. The trouble is that the "air bag disabled light" occasionally turns on when my teenage sons sit in the passenger seat. The dealer says it is because my sons do not always sit squarely to the back of the seat; that is, they occasionally slouch in the seat. I have videos of this behavior which I can send to you, so you can determine it is is something you would like to look into. Nissan's response is akin to steve jobs saying of the iphone 4, "you're holding it wrong." I think nissan should build their sensors for the way people sometimes sit in their seats, not as the way they would like them to sit under idea circumstances. They probably have one sensor at the back of the seat, when they actually need another in the middle and maybe one at the front to better judge the weight of the object in the seat.

100 miles NHTSA complaint 1188193 filed 2015-06-04

There is an air bag light that illuminates when there is weight on the passenger seat but the air bag will not be deployed, maybe because the vehicle thinks there is a dog, small child, or inanimate object sitting in the seat. The trouble is that the "air bag disabled light" occasionally turns on when my teenage sons sit in the passenger seat. The dealer says it is because my sons do not always sit squarely to the back of the seat; that is, they occasionally slouch in the seat. I have videos of this behavior which I can send to you, so you can determine it is is something you would like to look into. Nissan's response is akin to steve jobs saying of the iphone 4, "you're holding it wrong." I think nissan should build their sensors for the way people sometimes sit in their seats, not as the way they would like them to sit under idea circumstances. They probably have one sensor at the back of the seat, when they actually need another in the middle and maybe one at the front to better judge the weight of the object in the seat.

100 miles NHTSA complaint 1188194 filed 2015-06-04

Also reported on the 2014 Nissan Leaf

Other brake problem

11 reports median 34k

Other electrical problem

5 reports median 31k

Loss of braking

4 reports median 44k

Parking brake failure

2 reports median 45k

Seat belt or retractor failure

2 reports median 545

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 3 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 3 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 warning light or occupant sensor fault happen on the 2014 Nissan Leaf?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 100 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 warning light or occupant sensor fault on the 2014 Nissan Leaf?

3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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