2009 GMC Yukon XL
This year drew an ordinary 212 complaints for a GMC Yukon XL — the model's median is 151. What they were about is the unusual part: 29.7% of them mention airbag, against 2% across the model's other years.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 212 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 151 |
| Involving a crash | 5 |
| Involving a fire | 1 |
| Recalls | 5 |
What the complaints were about
- airbag — 29.7% of this year's complaints, against 2% across the model's other years (14.9×). Owners wrote it as: airbag, passenger airbag, side airbag, deploys.
- cracked — 26.9% of this year's complaints, against 1.3% across the model's other years (20.3×). Owners wrote it as: cracked, places, corner, corner passenger.
- dashboard — 30.7% of this year's complaints, against 4.8% across the model's other years (6.4×). Owners wrote it as: dashboard, dashboard cracked, crack dashboard, cracked dashboard.
Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.
What owners wrote
DASHBOARD IS CRACKED IN UPPER LEFT CORNER OF THE PASSENGER SIDE AIRBAG. THE CRACKED PART IS VERY SHARP AND WILL LIKELY YEAR THE AIRBAG IF IT DEPLOYS DURNING A CRASH, WHICH IS A HUGE SAFETY CONCERN. ALSO, IT SEEMS VERY BRITTLE AND THE FORCE OF THE AIRBAG DEPLOY…
DASH IS CRACKED BESIDE PASSENGER AIRBAG. GM STATED THAT NOBODY HAS DIED YET, SO THEY WILL NOT ISSUE A RECALL. THE DASH IS BRITTLE AND CRACKING MORE EVERY DAY. WHEN THE AIRBAG DEPLOYS, I AM TERRIFIED THAT DASH SHRAPNEL WILL BE THROWN INTO MY CHILDREN'S FACES. T…
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 21V053000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
- 21V052000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
- 21V050000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
- 10V240000 ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
- 09V154000 FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE Fixed free of charge.
How this was worked out
Every year of the GMC Yukon XL was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.
This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.
Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.
Own a 2009 GMC Yukon XL? What happened to yours?
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