The contact owns a 2006 Cadillac Sts. The contact stated that the front passenger side air bag sensor indicator illuminated, which indicated that the air bag system was faulty. An independent dealer stated that the failure was due to a faulty sensor. No additional information was available. The vehicle was not repaired and the manufacturer was not notified. The failure mileage was 146,000.

- St. Charles, MN, USA

(1) our 2006 Cadillac Sts repeatedly fails to sense the occupant in the passenger side of the vehicle and fails to trigger the passenger-side air bag sensor to activate. This is a safety issue. The only way the sensor will activate is if the passenger squirms around in the seat in an awkward way to have the sensor sense the occupant. But this is not always possible and on two occasions the passenger airbag sensor actually shut off after a refueling operation and restarting the vehicle even though the passenger never left the vehicle and had not changed position. (2) failure of the passenger sensor to sense an occupant, if not noticed by the driver, or passenger and taking action to attempt to reset it would cause the air bag not to deploy in the event of a collision. (3) the dealership tried for over a week to solve the problem, but would only say that the procedure to activate the sensor requires the passenger to enter and sit in the vehicle in a certain convoluted way that is basically un-natural and impossible for certain passengers to achieve. After repeated calls to GM customer service and raising the issue with the better business bureau we were told that GM engineers are "not allowed to modify the airbag sensor system because it was specified and controlled by the federal government." Further " it is against the law for them to attempt to fix the problem even though they sympathize with my problem." (4) from my perspective it appears that some design/engineering constraints have been forced on the manufacturer by the federal government which makes this situation untenable and creates a safety hazard for people who are not able to properly seat themselves in the passenger side of the vehicle. I think the design specs need to be challenged and recalls issued to make the passenger-side airbag sensors properly sense an occupant that any reasonable person would expect to be protected by the passenger airbag system.

- Plymouth, MI, USA