Kia is recalling more than 128,000 examples of the 2014 Soul to address front airbags that may not deploy in a collision due to a faulty control module. This recall addresses a similar issue as a campaign announced earlier in the year for the 2017-2019 Soul and Soul EV, 2017-2018 Forte, 2017 Forte Koup and 2017-2019 Sedona, but the root cause of the two issues is different.
The previous campaign addressed a manufacturing defect that could result in the electronic circuits inside the module shorting out due to contact between internal components. This problem is more of a “perfect storm” scenario, according to Kia. In order for the airbags to fail to deploy, a collision would have to be severe enough for both the left and right front impact sensors to be disabled simultaneously, prior to them being able to alert the module to the collision to initiate airbag deployment.
“In the rare event that communication to the Airbag Control Unit (ACU) from both the left and right front impact sensors is simultaneously lost early in a severe crash, before frontal airbag deployment is commanded by the ACU, the front airbags will not deploy,” Kia’s recall report said.
Just how rare is that? Well, per Kia’s chronology, the issue was brought to the company’s attention by a lawsuit filed in 2019. Kia says only one incident has been reported with a single injury and no fatalities reported, so it stands to reason that the vehicle at the center of that suit is the only one that has demonstrated this failure in the real world.
“Even though the simultaneous loss of communication from both left and right front impact sensors to the ACU before frontal airbag deployment is commanded by the ACU is a rare crash event, as a precautionary measure, Kia NA decides to conduct a safety recall for the 2014MY Soul,” its February, 2022 entry said.
Source: www.autoblog.com