Seat belt or retractor failure on the 2011 Toyota Camry
10 crashes 2 fires 10 injuries 22 of the 16 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 2011 Toyota Camry report seat belt or retractor failure at a median of 70,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 75,000 miles, from 14 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 45,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 90,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 43,166 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.
7% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45,434 miles | 57,000 miles | 69,781 miles | 75,141 miles | 88,600 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, 2 a fire and 10 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 26 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 130,000 miles.
By volume the 2007 carries the most reports, with 61; the 2011 has 16. 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.
I was involved in an accident. I ran into the back of another car at 41 MPH (there is a strong possibility that I had a black-out, docs are still examining the evidence). The airbag in the steering wheel did not deploy. Fortunately I was wearing my seatbelt and have lots of soreness and bruising on my chest, and severe memory loss around the incident. My garmin dash-cam was running the entire time, recording the date, time, location, gps coordinates, and speed in MPH at crash time. You can clearly see how fast I was going when I rear-ended the other vehicle and the camry I was driving sustained massive damage. The cabin held up well, but no airbags in the vehicle deployed, including the one in the steering wheel a few feet in front of me. Certainly this is not right? *tr
On sunday evening april 12 I was pulling into a parking space at the holiday inn in east brunswick nj. When I applied the break, my vehicle accelerated on its own. It jumped the curbing in front of the parking space, swiped the front of a parked vehicle and crashed into a stone birdbath in front of the hotel. Miraculously I escaped with a rather ugly bruise to my left forearm and to my right breast from seat belt pressure. My airbag did not open. I will send the police report in another email. It says I was attempting to park in a "handicapped" spot. I was not. I am not handicapped. It also says I "inadvertently" applied the gas instead of the break. I never told anyone that. I was fully awake, conscious and applied the break. I sent a data imaging authorization and consent form to [xxx]. I have to enter a plea by mail to careless driving charges by 5/18/15. I requested that holiday inn provide me with surveillance video but was told that they would "deal directly" with the insurance company. I was notified on april 27th that my vehicle has been deemed a total loss. I was notified on april 29th that the vehicle's "black box" (for…
On sunday evening april 12 I was pulling into a parking space at the holiday inn in east brunswick nj. When I applied the break, my vehicle accelerated on its own. It jumped the curbing in front of the parking space, swiped the front of a parked vehicle and crashed into a stone birdbath in front of the hotel. Miraculously I escaped with a rather ugly bruise to my left forearm and to my right breast from seat belt pressure. My airbag did not open. I will send the police report in another email. It says I was attempting to park in a "handicapped" spot. I was not. I am not handicapped. It also says I "inadvertently" applied the gas instead of the break. I never told anyone that. I was fully awake, conscious and applied the break. I sent a data imaging authorization and consent form to [xxx]. I have to enter a plea by mail to careless driving charges by 5/18/15. I requested that holiday inn provide me with surveillance video but was told that they would "deal directly" with the insurance company. I was notified on april 27th that my vehicle has been deemed a total loss. I was notified on april 29th that the vehicle's "black box" (for…
Also reported on the 2011 Toyota Camry
Other visibility problem
Other body or interior problem
Other speed control problem
Other powertrain problem
Other brake problem
Other suspension problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 16 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 2011 Toyota Camry?
Across 14 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 75,000 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 2011 Toyota Camry?
16 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 10 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