Seat belt or retractor failure on the 2017 Subaru Outback
6 crashes 3 injuries 9 of the 9 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 2017 Subaru Outback report seat belt or retractor failure at a median of 5,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 15,000 miles, from 9 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 82,000 miles. It is the 18th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 700 miles at the tenth percentile to 20,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 21,560 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A window that narrow is the signature of a part that fails on its own schedule rather than on how the car is driven — which is usually a design or supplier problem rather than wear and tear.
89% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 700 miles | 3,100 miles | 3,100 miles | 17,000 miles | 22,260 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, 6 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 $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 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2006, at a median of 1 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 100,000 miles.
By volume the 2014 carries the most reports, with 13; the 2017 has 9. 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.
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.
Faulty occupant detection system. Turns off airbag with passenger. Turns on airbag and seatbelt chime with no passenger/weight. Intermittent. Brand new car with 700 miles and brought in 3 times to subaru santa monica. Service center unable to replicate problem, but I sent them videos.
Faulty occupant detection system. Turns off airbag with passenger. Turns on airbag and seatbelt chime with no passenger/weight. Intermittent. Brand new car with 700 miles and brought in 3 times to subaru santa monica. Service center unable to replicate problem, but I sent them videos.
September 9th 2017, our outback was involved in an accident on a mixed residential/commercial street intersection, when it was hit on the left front wheel, hard enough to spin the car so that the left rear corner made contact with the other vehicle. The impact resulted in serious injuries requiring hospitalization and weeks of recovery. The airbags & seatbelt pre-tensioners did not activate. After the collision, the "sos" button was pressed, but there was no response from starlink. Several days later the starlink concierge called to advise us that the lights were "on" and checking on our wellbeing. They were unaware that the vehicle had been in an accident several days prior, nor did they have any record that the "sos" button had been activated. The cause of the non-activation is still under investigation by our insurance and subaru
Also reported on the 2017 Subaru Outback
Other electrical problem
Other visibility problem
Windshield cracking
No-start or intermittent start failure
Other powertrain problem
Parasitic battery drain
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 9 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 2017 Subaru Outback?
Across 9 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 15,000 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 2017 Subaru Outback?
9 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.9 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