2012 BMW 650I — Complaint #1558545
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about AIR BAGS:SENSOR:OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION filed April 16, 2019
NHTSA complaint #1558545 (ODI reference 11196811) concerns a 2012 BMW 650I and was filed on April 16, 2019. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 1, 2019. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as air bags:sensor:occupant classification, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same BMW 650I cohort independently describe similar air bags:sensor:occupant classification failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2012 BMW 650I shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
RECEIVE A "PASSENGER RESTRAINT SYSTEM" FAILURE. BMW EL CAJON DEALERSHIP DIAGNOSED PROBLEM AS PASSENGER OCCUPANCY SEAT MAT SENSOR. THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS ISSUE. THE FRONT PASSENGER SEAT OCCUPANT DETECTION MAT DETERMINES IF AND HOW THE PASSENGER FRONTAL AIR BAG SHOULD DEPLOY IN A CRASH. THIS KNOW BMW ISSUE DEVELOPS CRACKS AND COULD LEAD TO A SYSTEM FAILURE. IF THE ELECTRONIC SENSING MAT IN THE FRONT PASSENGER SEAT FAILS, THIS WILL DISABLE THE FRONT PASSENGER AIR BAG AND THE AIR BAG WILL NOT DEPLOY DURING A CRASH. THE KNOWN BMW DEFECTIVE SEAT SENSOR IS WELL DOCUMENTED200,000 BMWS RECALLED IN 2008, 77,000 IN 2013, AND 2,158 IN 2017. I REQUEST YOU ISSUE A RECALL FOR ALL 2012 BMW 650I'S ASAP TO PREVENT THIS INEFFECTIVE SAFETY SYSTEM FROM CAUSING PROPERTY DAMAGE, INJURY OR DEATH.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1558545 |
| ODI Number | 11196811 |
| Date Filed | April 16, 2019 |
| Failure Date | April 1, 2019 |
| VIN | WBALX3C50CD |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.