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2008 GMC SIERRA 1500 — Complaint #1790613

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NHTSA Complaint about SEAT BELTS:PRETENSIONER filed January 27, 2022

NHTSA complaint #1790613 (ODI reference 11449143) concerns a 2008 GMC SIERRA 1500 and was filed on January 27, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 10, 2022. The report was geocoded to Alabama based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as seat belts:pretensioner, 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 GMC SIERRA 1500 cohort independently describe similar seat belts:pretensioner 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 2008 GMC SIERRA 1500 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
2008 GMC SIERRA 1500
Component
SEAT BELTS:PRETENSIONER
State
Alabama

Complaint Description

I started my 2008 GMC Sierra, crew cab and began to pull my drivers side seat belt across my body to latch it. I was about 1/2 way when I heard a loud bang that sounded like a gun going off to my right, the seat belt that I had in my hand pulled back tight pulling my hand with it. There was smoke and the smell of gun powder coming from the bottom of the passenger seat by the seat belt. With my heart pounding in my chest I got out of my truck as quickly as I could (my driver's side door was still open). Both the driver's side and passenger side seat belts were pulled tight and I was unable to get either to release. The truck is now sitting, unable to be driven safely with the seat belt on. The dealership said it would be just under $1,000 to fix plus towing and has no idea how or why it happened. This truck has never been in an accident and currently has about 140,000 mostly highway miles on it and I am the original owner. Searching online I found that there are other people on blogs wh

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 1790613
ODI Number 11449143
Date Filed January 27, 2022
Failure Date January 10, 2022
VIN 2GTEC13C881

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.