AtWhatMileage
Airbag · 2 owner reports

Airbag failed to deploy in a crash on the 2001 Toyota Rav4

2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 2 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.

Only 1 report 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 2
With an odometer reading 1
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $1,000–$5,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 23rd

When airbag failed to deploy in a crash gets reported

There are 2 reports of airbag failed to deploy in a crash on the 2001 Toyota Rav4, 1 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 72,000 miles. It is the 23rd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 12,200 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, 2 a crash and 1 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 20 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2013, at a median of 400 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 105,000 miles.

By volume the 2010 carries the most reports, with 11; the 2001 has 0. 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. 1997 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1998 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 105k
  3. 1999 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 105k
  4. 2001 (this one) 12k
  5. 2002 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 33k
  6. 2003 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 18k
  7. 2004 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 81k
  8. 2005 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 27k
  9. 2006 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 165k
  10. 2007 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 36k
  11. 2008 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 97k
  12. 2009 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 64k
  13. 2010 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 59k
  14. 2011 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 44k
  15. 2012 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 59k
  16. 2013 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 379
  17. 2014 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 17k
  18. 2015 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 30k
  19. 2016 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 32k
  20. 2017 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 19k
  21. 2018 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 11k
  22. 2019 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 3k
  23. 2020 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 2k
  24. 2021 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 14k
  25. 2024 Toyota Rav4 airbag failed to deploy in a crash 5k

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 driving home one night, I was driving a 2001 toyota rav 4. Ai was in the right hand lane, a deer ran in front of me, I swerved to the right and missed the deer, however I hit a guardrail on the right side, overcompenciated across road straight up a bank, approx 20 ft. The acr turned to the right and rolled over twice down the bank. Since the air bags did not deploy, I suffered a deep laceration to right side of head and the gear shift fractured 4-7 ribs. There was a police officer nearby who saw the whole thing, he stated he clocked me at 35mph, and stated also in the police report the airbags did not deploy. If you can help me in this matter I would be very grateful. Respectfully--billy jack harrell *tr

12,200 miles NHTSA complaint 647655 filed 2007-11-27

Also reported on the 2001 Toyota Rav4

Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure

121 reports median 104k

Other powertrain problem

66 reports median 108k

Complete transmission failure

40 reports median 106k

Harsh or jerky shifting

20 reports median 102k

Other engine problem

20 reports median 113k

Other speed control problem

19 reports median 103k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 2 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 2 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 2001 Toyota Rav4?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 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 failed to deploy in a crash on the 2001 Toyota Rav4?

2 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