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One evening in February, Mary Nicholson, 23, was driving on Chamberlain Avenue, about to hop on the Queensway for an east-end ringette game.
A teammate was with her in the 2009 Mercedes-Benz R320, which looks like a cross between a wagon and a minivan.
Out of the blue, the curtain airbag on the driver side deployed. “It sounded like a cannon shot,” said Nicholson, a student. “I was terrified.”
There was such an impact, she first thought the vehicle had been “T-boned” by another car. She pulled over and had a look. There was nothing to see: no dents, no potholes, no jutting curbs, no bumps in the road. She says she was just driving at normal speed down the street.
Still jittery, she called her father, Dave, a retired firefighter. She ended up rolling up the curtain as best she could and continued on her way.
It’s what happened next that only made things worse.
After seven weeks in the shop, they were presented with a repair estimate from Ogilvie Motors for $11,639 and a letter from Mercedes-Benz Canada saying an inspection had found the vehicle was operating just fine.
No “fault codes” could be found with the Supplemental Restraint System (SRS). The “preset thresholds were exceeded,” the letter said, triggering the deployment of the airbag and the “Emergency Tensioning Retractor,” which cause the seatbelts to tighten up.
“The SRS control unit constantly monitors and evaluates physical data relating to vehicle deceleration and acceleration, such as duration, direction and intensity,” reads a letter from the Mercedes-Benz legal department. “After the vehicle inspection and a thorough review of the findings, we are confident that the SRS system in your wife’s vehicle operated as it was designed to.”
In other words, there had to be “an event” that caused the airbag to go off — it couldn’t possibly be our high-tech equipment, which has sensors eight ways to Sunday.
You know, on one level this is obviously a so-called “First World” problem that well-to-do people with an $80,000 car have the means to deal with. But, on another level, it speaks to the mistrust consumers feel toward Corporate Kingdom, so to speak, and the arrogant baloney we are sometimes asked to swallow.
Volkswagen and its diesel engines. Toyota and its accelerator problem. GM and its ignition switch. Last week, for Pete’s sake, we read a suggestion that the recommended dosage of Tylenol may have been wrong all these years. And we’re supposed to have faith in their reassurances?
More to the point, some of you will know about the massive recall by an airbag maker called Takata. It involves close to 70 million “inflators” that were installed by at least 14 auto manufacturers, including some models of Mercedes-Benz. While estimates are it will take years to sort out, The Associated Press reports 11 deaths and 100 injuries have so far resulted from these malfunctioning devices.
A friend of mine said he was shaken when he got his recall letter because it noted the airbag could spontaneously explode, sending bits of metal shrapnel at the occupants. While Dave Nicholson, 58, does not believe the side-curtain issue is a Takata problem, it sure makes you wonder.
(Weirdly, Mary reports she had a recall letter about the airbag in the VW she is now driving.)
Nicholson has pushed the issue further, with a complaint to Transport Canada. Adding to his frustration, he says, is the position of Mercedes-Benz that any information downloaded from their vehicle is proprietary and belongs to the company.
Mary Nicholson was driving her family’s $80,0000 Mercedes in February when the side curtain airbag suddenly went off. When her family took the car to be fixed, they were told it would cost them almost $12,000 to replace the airbag, even though the incident was the vehicle’s malfunction, she says.
“I just asked them what the ‘event’ was. That’s all I would really like to know, so I can comfort myself that something happened, something out of sorts.”
At this point, says Nicholson, he doesn’t know what to do with the vehicle. It has 200,000 kilometres on it, is out of warranty and needs a $12,000 fix just for the airbag, making resale a little tricky.
“I don’t want to just stick someone else with it, to be quite blunt.”
Both he and his daughter have speculated that this minor episode could have been much worse. What if she had been travelling at high speed on the highway? Or if a different airbag had suddenly gone off? Might it have led to a terrible accident?
“Thankfully, she kept her wits about her,” said Nicholson, “but she was shaken.”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
A teammate was with her in the 2009 Mercedes-Benz R320, which looks like a cross between a wagon and a minivan.
Out of the blue, the curtain airbag on the driver side deployed. “It sounded like a cannon shot,” said Nicholson, a student. “I was terrified.”
There was such an impact, she first thought the vehicle had been “T-boned” by another car. She pulled over and had a look. There was nothing to see: no dents, no potholes, no jutting curbs, no bumps in the road. She says she was just driving at normal speed down the street.
Still jittery, she called her father, Dave, a retired firefighter. She ended up rolling up the curtain as best she could and continued on her way.
It’s what happened next that only made things worse.
After seven weeks in the shop, they were presented with a repair estimate from Ogilvie Motors for $11,639 and a letter from Mercedes-Benz Canada saying an inspection had found the vehicle was operating just fine.
No “fault codes” could be found with the Supplemental Restraint System (SRS). The “preset thresholds were exceeded,” the letter said, triggering the deployment of the airbag and the “Emergency Tensioning Retractor,” which cause the seatbelts to tighten up.
“The SRS control unit constantly monitors and evaluates physical data relating to vehicle deceleration and acceleration, such as duration, direction and intensity,” reads a letter from the Mercedes-Benz legal department. “After the vehicle inspection and a thorough review of the findings, we are confident that the SRS system in your wife’s vehicle operated as it was designed to.”
In other words, there had to be “an event” that caused the airbag to go off — it couldn’t possibly be our high-tech equipment, which has sensors eight ways to Sunday.
You know, on one level this is obviously a so-called “First World” problem that well-to-do people with an $80,000 car have the means to deal with. But, on another level, it speaks to the mistrust consumers feel toward Corporate Kingdom, so to speak, and the arrogant baloney we are sometimes asked to swallow.
Volkswagen and its diesel engines. Toyota and its accelerator problem. GM and its ignition switch. Last week, for Pete’s sake, we read a suggestion that the recommended dosage of Tylenol may have been wrong all these years. And we’re supposed to have faith in their reassurances?
More to the point, some of you will know about the massive recall by an airbag maker called Takata. It involves close to 70 million “inflators” that were installed by at least 14 auto manufacturers, including some models of Mercedes-Benz. While estimates are it will take years to sort out, The Associated Press reports 11 deaths and 100 injuries have so far resulted from these malfunctioning devices.
A friend of mine said he was shaken when he got his recall letter because it noted the airbag could spontaneously explode, sending bits of metal shrapnel at the occupants. While Dave Nicholson, 58, does not believe the side-curtain issue is a Takata problem, it sure makes you wonder.
(Weirdly, Mary reports she had a recall letter about the airbag in the VW she is now driving.)
Nicholson has pushed the issue further, with a complaint to Transport Canada. Adding to his frustration, he says, is the position of Mercedes-Benz that any information downloaded from their vehicle is proprietary and belongs to the company.
Mary Nicholson was driving her family’s $80,0000 Mercedes in February when the side curtain airbag suddenly went off. When her family took the car to be fixed, they were told it would cost them almost $12,000 to replace the airbag, even though the incident was the vehicle’s malfunction, she says.
“I just asked them what the ‘event’ was. That’s all I would really like to know, so I can comfort myself that something happened, something out of sorts.”
At this point, says Nicholson, he doesn’t know what to do with the vehicle. It has 200,000 kilometres on it, is out of warranty and needs a $12,000 fix just for the airbag, making resale a little tricky.
“I don’t want to just stick someone else with it, to be quite blunt.”
Both he and his daughter have speculated that this minor episode could have been much worse. What if she had been travelling at high speed on the highway? Or if a different airbag had suddenly gone off? Might it have led to a terrible accident?
“Thankfully, she kept her wits about her,” said Nicholson, “but she was shaken.”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
