Passenger Airbag Light

The passenger airbag light (located under the climate control panel and above the shifter) is always on in my EX when the passenger seat is completely empty. Once someone sits down, the light turns off.

From my experience with other vehicles, this light should only be illuminated when a person/object is IN the seat but weighs less than 65lbs, right?

Welp, I found the answer in the manual:

"If the front passenger seat is empty, the passenger's front airbag will not deploy and the indicator will come on."

Bummer. Here's to staring at that light for the next several years

It is annoying. I asked about this right away when picking up the car. Apparently Honda is switching to this default. A few other manufactures are also doing this. Not sure why they consider this safer. The passenger gets a vocal warning if their belt isn't on. I prefer the old way.

Maybe they got sued because the bag didn't inflate to protect the empty seat so this is their way of making sure we know, forever, that it won't deploy to protect an empty seat. Agreed about annoyance. Yellow/Red lights should only go on when the car isn't working as designed.

Weird, in our other 3 cars which includes my 2016 GTI, the yellow warning light only comes on if the seat is occupied at all with any weight. Light goes out if the weight is enough and the seatbelt is fastened.

Ahh, u guys just reminded me of a story my dealer shared with me when I picked up my new car. He had a customer freak out because her "airbag" light was coming on during a road trip. She freaked out, insisted it be towed back to the dealer (it was a new purchase). When she arrived, she pointed to the PASSENGER airbag indicator (she made it sound like it was the SRS fault indicator in the cluster) and her purse was on the seat causing the light to illuminate.

Maybe Honda got tired of customers like that??

Anyway the light always on would annoy me. In our cars the light is at eye-level.

Yeah I've noticed this too, in my Fusion it used to go out a few seconds after starting the car.

And its not subtle. That thing is bright

New Mazda do the same, it's dumb.

I just Googled this problem and found:

When illuminated, the purpose of the "PASS AIR BAG OFF" indicator light is to inform you that the passenger frontal air bag has been automatically turned off (suppressed) by the advanced frontal air bag system and therefore will not deploy. This can happen if sensors detect a small-stature passenger, such as an infant or child, in the right front passenger seating position.

Click to expand...

Thinking about this from an engineering perspective, the opposite of detecting an arbitrarily small-stature passenger is detecting all bigger ones. The latter is probably a LOT easier/more reliable. So they are probably making the engineering decision to detect when to enable the airbag and leaving it off at all other times. That leaves them with no choice but leaving the light on all times the airbag isn't enabled so they don't have to worry about detecting the difference between, say, an empty seat and a really small passenger.

Not saying I like that yellow light on all the time. Just understanding what their choice was.

thetreeisgreen said:

The passenger airbag light (located under the climate control panel and above the shifter) is always on in my EX when the passenger seat is completely empty. Once someone sits down, the light turns off.

From my experience with other vehicles, this light should only be illuminated when a person/object is IN the seat but weighs less than 65lbs, right?

Click to expand...

Just found a video explaining this little mystery: