Jaguar is recalling more than 40,000 sport utility vehicles in the United States, Canada, and some U.S. territories for passenger-airbag problems. Jaguar is recalling the LR2 and Range Rover Evoque models to fix the system that identifies if someone is seating on the passenger seat. Apparently, there are risks of the air bag failing to deploy even in a crash because of failure in identification.
Some vehicles have disabled air bags. The Land Rover airbag system was designed to shut down if a child is seating in front automatically. However, there are instances that send signals to shut down the air bag even when it shouldn't especially when an adult is the passenger.
Jaguar Land Rover is ready to fix the problem by updating the software. The company would notify owners of the following vehicles: 23,495 Evoque models 2012 and 2013 and 17,066 LR2s from 2010 to 2015 models. This one is a big recall but fortunately, no related accidents have been reported.
Safety regulations on vehicles especially on airbag issues have increased ever since the safety crisis at General Motors a few months back. More than 2.6 million GM cars were identified to have defective ignition switches. The problem could result to accidents, airbags disabled, and engine shut-off.
Jaguar Land Rover will be updating the restraint control module software of the vehicles for free once the cars are sent to the dealers. The recall will start on the 30th of August.
Meanwhile, General Motors is investigating on 320,000 Chevrolet Impala sedans for potential passenger air bag problems. Almost the same problem but Chevrolet is checking on the software algorithm while Land Rover is looking at memory as the main cause of computer signal errors. Inquiry into the problem was brought about by a formal complaint by Donald Friedman. Friedman is an engineer working at a crash analysis company based in California. He investigated a crash in Texas where a passenger's airbag did not deploy in an accident while the driver's airbag did.
The software update for the air bag control module is expected to finally fix the issue and prevent future problems. Hopefully, no airbags not deploying will be reported.
