Air Bag Not Deploy problems of the 2009 GMC Yukon

The contact owns a 2009 GMC Yukon. While driving 35 mph, the contact crashed into the driver's side door of another vehicle, which then rolled over. The air bags failed to deploy. There were no warning indicators illuminated. The contact sustained injuries to the left foot, left knee, a concusion, chest pains, and a black eye. A police report was filed. The vehicle was towed to a dealer where the failure was diagnosed. The driver of the other vehicle also sustained minor injuries. The contact had not received notification of NHTSA campaign number: 16v381000 (air bags), which was associated with the VIN. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 69,000.

The top cover of the dashboard has a crack on the hump above the instrument cluster and on the passenger side. I am concerned that this will affect the performance of the air bag. . . God forbid that the vehicle may be involved in an accident and the air bag does not deploy correctly. That could be the difference between life and death. The vehicle is a 2009 GMC Yukon, with all the technology and advances gm has made, I would assume that a safety issue of this degree would warrant a recall or immediate attention and responsibility from gm.

February 2014 I had noticed 3 cracks on my dash board, 2 of them being right by the passenger airbag. I have contacted gm to fix the issue before anything bad happens with the air bags. They want me to pay $900 to have this fixed but it is a safety issue. I am in constant worry if my air bags will deploy at any point in time due to the cracks. Or if I happen to get into an accident will my air bags not deploy or will there be a defect in the air bags due to plastic cutting the air bag open on deploy. Gm is very aware of this problem as I know 500 cases already with this same issue as they all have the same concern.

I started noticing a rattle when driving my 2009 GMC Yukon denali, but could not determine where it was coming from. Finally discovered that a crack had occurred in my passenger side dash above the air bag in the top left corner, and the rattle I was hearing was from the broken plastic. I have found numerous incidents online about this problem, so I know this is not unique to my vehicle and that GMC is aware of it but has chosen to ignore it. This manufacturing flaw leaves one to question how safe the passenger airbag is and whether or not it will work properly. I was involved in an accident in 2005 where my driver air bag module (not a gm vehicle) was knocked out of the steering wheel by a piece of iron coming through the windshield, and it never deployed. It would stand to reason that if the support area around the module is weakened by something like a crack, that the air bag may not deploy as designed, possibly sending the module or fragments of the module into the vehicle. We have been told that air bags are designed to protect us in an accident, but they can't protect us if they never deploy or if we are hit by flying module metal because of general motors design flaw that they have refused to take action on. My family has owned 6 different gm vehicles over the last 10 years, but their choice to ignore this potential fatal flaw has me looking elsewhere. I do not want myself or any of my family members to be one of the statistics that it is going to take to get this problem taken care of.