Air Bag Not Deploy problems of the 2013 Volvo XC90

My vehicle's air bag light is on. My dash message passenger airbag off service urgent. I took it to koons Volvo of owings mills, inc to be serviced. I was told that the passenger occupancy weight sensor has stopped working and need to be replaced. The service technician could not tell me why it would have stopped working. He just said it could just happen. I asked the service technician what does it do and he said that it weighs passengers for the correct pressure of the airbag in case it is deployed. He also said that my complete airbag system will not work without it which means that the driver's side as well as the side airbags will not deploy in case of an accident. The cost of this repair is $2,249 which is extremely expensive. This appears to be more of a defect and not wear and tear. Volvo advertises it's safety features which attracted me to purchase one. They don't tell you that the safety features may not work when you need them. I was told by another service station in alexandria, va that this is a common repair that he performs on Volvos. I saw the airbag light one morning when I turned on the car after it had been sitting overnight. No one was in the passenger seat. It was not there the night before.

I am the second owner of this car the other owner was in the family and the airbags have never been deployed. A couple months ago the srs airbag service urgent light came on and we took it to the dealership to have it looked at. They said that the airbags needed to be replaced. Being that this is such a crucial component that should be working if it has never been used I wanted to alert NHTSA and see if it were a more widespread concern. I appreciate you looking into this. There were no events leading up to the airbag light and that is the reason for my concern.