Nissan Recalls 3.5 Million Vehicles for Airbag Problems

Nissan is recalling about 3.5 million vehicles, including almost 3.2 million in the United States, because the front-passenger airbag might not work properly in a crash, according to reports from the automaker posted Friday on the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The action ends a two-year effort by federal regulators to get the automaker to fix widespread problems with the occupant sensing system, which is supposed to detect whether the passenger seat is empty or occupied by a child or adult. It began with a recall in 2014 of about 990,000 vehicles.

The recall includes about 622,000 2013-16 Sentras in which a malfunction could cause the airbag to deploy in a crash when it is not supposed to, as when a child is seated there, according to a report the automaker provided federal regulators.

Nissan is aware of “at least three crashes” in which the airbag system did not deploy properly, resulting in “moderate injuries,” a Nissan spokesman, Steve Yaeger, said in an email. He did not immediately respond when asked whether any of those injured were children.

The problem with the rest of vehicles in the recall is that airbags may not deploy when they are supposed to because the sensing system fails to register that a passenger is sitting there. It includes some of the automaker’s most popular models: 2013-16 Altima; 2014-17 Rogue; 2016-17 Maxima; 2015-16 Murano; 2013-17 Pathfinder; 2013-16 Leaf, and the 2014-16 Infiniti Q50 and QX60.

Last August, the agency opened an investigation into whether Nissan had fixed the problem. That investigation was prompted by 124 complaints from owners.

One California owner told the agency in August 2013 that the airbag warning light came on after the repair. It was taken back to the dealer, he said, and “they advised me they were able to replicate the problem, but they didn’t know now to fix it and would contract the engineers” to make the repair.”