2014 SUBARU FORESTER — Complaint #1959445
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about AIR BAGS:SENSOR:OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION filed January 18, 2024
NHTSA complaint #1959445 (ODI reference 11566396) concerns a 2014 SUBARU FORESTER and was filed on January 18, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 30, 2023. The report was geocoded to New Jersey 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 SUBARU FORESTER 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 2014 SUBARU FORESTER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Occupant Detection System (ODS) system failure causes the front passenger-side airbag system to malfunction, which could mean that the airbag may not deploy during a collision. Although other model years have a product campaign bulletin for this issue (WUM-98R, NHTSA ID 19V-701), the 2014 does not. Numerous other consumers have complained about this same issue. The dealership indicates that the only remedy is to replace the seat cushion, which costs more than $1,000, at the consumers expense.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1959445 |
| ODI Number | 11566396 |
| Date Filed | January 18, 2024 |
| Failure Date | December 30, 2023 |
| VIN | JF2SJAEC0EH |
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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.