Airbag warning

[OrganMorgan]

Apologies for having to ask about this... I've seen references to a new warning about the passenger airbag being 'on' but am I right in thinking people are seeing this in their roof screen near the SOS buttons? This is where my warning is. I thought other owners were referring to the warning being on the main screen. (It doesn't seem unreasonable to have the warning, as others have said... I was just surprised to see it in red script in the roof.)

[Harald]

Mine is on, too. Even before the update.

[OrganMorgan]

Mine is on, too. Even before the update.

Perhaps I just hadn't noticed!

[OomD]

Isn't the warning in the roof to indicate that the passenger airbag is enabled, i.e not a fault condition?

[OrganMorgan]

Isn't the warning in the roof to indicate that the passenger airbag is enabled, i.e not a fault condition?

Yes, I'm sure that's right. I wasn't thinking it was a fault but I'd read on the forum that some owners had this warning come up which the OK button didn;t resolve. I hadn't had any warning about it come up on the main screen, but suddenly spotted it in the roof screen.

[Geoff]

Isn't the warning in the roof to indicate that the passenger airbag is enabled, i.e not a fault condition?

Doesn’t a warning that there isn’t a fault mean that if there isn’t a warning there is a fault? It isn’t a fault condition anyway, the airbag is either on or off, the warning doesn’t indicate a fault.

When using a rear facing child seat, I’d want an indication that the airbag is off. I don’t want a warning every time I use the car that the airbag is on, obviously when not using a child seat it’s supposed to be on.

[Ste007]

Apologies for having to ask about this... I've seen references to a new warning about the passenger airbag being 'on' but am I right in thinking people are seeing this in their roof screen near the SOS buttons? This is where my warning is. I thought other owners were referring to the warning being on the main screen. (It doesn't seem unreasonable to have the warning, as others have said... I was just surprised to see it in red script in the roof.)

There appears to be 2 separate observations here.

Firstly there is an ‘airbag on‘ notification in the roof lining console just above the rear view mirror. This is on all the time unless the airbag has been switched off. Like others, I only noticed this some months after I took possession of the car when I was in a darker than normal situation. I thought it was a new warning but it turned out it had always been there.

Secondly, following the update to 1.4.2 a new airbag warning appeared on the infotainment screen near the top. No idea why this appeared but it prompted pressing ‘ok’ to acknowledge it. It wasn’t immediately apparent where this ok button was but it is located on the right side of the steering wheel. Pressing this dismisses the notification on screen and it doesn’t reappear.

[SP1959]

But the car doesn't know if you are using a child seat in the front.

It can tell that there is something in the seat, person, child seat, bag, dog, but not what. So it can't give you different warnings according to what is on the seat.

Anyway, the car doesn't give a warning that the airbag is on or off.

This was a one-off warning after the update, possibly because the car might have switched on airbags on that the owner had previously off. Once it was acknowledged, it didn't come back.

Once you have acknowledged the warning, and changed you airbag setting back to off if required, nothing else needs to be done and there are no annoying warnings.

[andrewollason]

The air bag disable switch is there for rear facing child seats only. The airbag should be enabled for forward facing seats.

[andrewollason]

Might be worth checking but if Volvo are using the same logic as Mercedes the warning light in the overhead console telling you that the airbag is disabled should go out when a passenger sits on the seat. Logic being that there is no need to fire the bag if nobody is in the seat to protect. Hence the manual override for rear facing seats. Mercedes have an automatic sensor but that needs specific seats to work so they need a manual system too anyway.