Airbag failed to deploy in a crash on the 2005 Toyota Camry
33 crashes 18 injuries 51 of the 33 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 airbag failed to deploy in a crash gets reported
Owners of the 2005 Toyota Camry report airbag failed to deploy in a crash at a median of 50,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 67,500 miles, from 29 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 72,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 22,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 180,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 157,600 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
48% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22,400 miles | 29,269 miles | 48,857 miles | 68,571 miles | 180,000 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, 33 a crash and 18 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 $1,000–$5,000 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 25 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2018, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 1996 at 200,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 35; the 2005 has 33. 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.
Dt*: the contact stated the vehicle was stolen on 8-9-06. While the vehicle was stolen it was involved in a crash. The vehicle hit a heavy metal guard rail at a dead end. The air bags did not deploy. There were injuries sustained. The vehicle was totaled. There was a police report filed.
Truck turned left in front of my vehicle and my car t-boned him and the airbag did not deploy. I was traveling about 40 MPH. I have whiplash and back injuries due to being sloshed around in the car along with a 3 inch wide bruise across my chest and underarm area. *tr
My wife was driving at a speed of no more than 15 MPH off of our housing estate on and heading towards a main road. The road was icy and my wife is a cautious driver who would not be driving at excessive speed. As she approached the junction she applied the brakes to stop the car at the junction the car did not seem to slow. She made a split second decision to turn right on to a cul-de-sac rather than go across the main road. She ended up driving across the cul-de-sac before hitting a lamp post and then driving into a neighbors garage door where the car finally stopped. My wife was not injured although the car was heavily damaged, the air bags did not deploy. There were visible skid marks on the cul-de-sac where you could see that she had applied the brakes. The police report concluded that my wife was driving with excessive speed, my wife is a very cautious driver who has never had an accident in 20 years. When interviewed by the police she was not sure exactly how this could have happened it happened so all she could do was agree with the police report. Given the media attention with newer toyota models recently we though we…
Also reported on the 2005 Toyota Camry
Other speed control problem
Other powertrain problem
Seat belt or retractor failure
Other brake problem
Other engine problem
Other steering problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 33 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 failed to deploy in a crash happen on the 2005 Toyota Camry?
Across 29 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 50,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 67,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is airbag failed to deploy in a crash on the 2005 Toyota Camry?
33 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