Passenger Airbag Cutoff Timeline: Information

Check your individual vehicle and your state and local laws before deciding whether or not to place your child in the front passenger seat in a vehicle with advanced airbags. 

Cutoff weights will vary from model to model. Some vehicles with a cutoff will inflate the passenger airbag with as little as 30 to 40 pounds, while others may require over 70 pounds. 

Applies to USA models only. As a general rule, vehicles newer than 2007 will have advanced airbags with an automatic airbag cutoff, and are not shown here – this is intended to show the transitional era from non-cutoff to automatic airbag cutoff vehicles. 

Some vehicles discontinued in 2006 and earlier are not shown – these can be assumed to have never received the cutoffs. 

NOTE: A few manufacturers, namely Stellantis USA (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram) as well as Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and possibly a few other niche manufacturers, do not use automatic cutoffs. These vehicles are not listed. Stellantis USA did use automatic cutoffs in many of their vehicles during the mid-late 2000s but quickly discontinued them on most vehicles. These vehicles exclusively use the “low risk deployment” method to pass the FMVSS 208 advanced airbag standard, but they WILL deploy a passenger airbag regardless of occupant presence or size. 

This chart may have unintentional errors. Use at your own judgement. 

Most modern vehicles will deactivate the passenger airbag for an empty seat or if the front seat passenger does not weigh enough – typically, an infant or small child. The purpose of these cutoffs is twofold: to prevent unnecessary damage and repair costs when the passenger seat is empty, and to reduce or eliminate the risk that a small child will be injured by an inflating airbag if in the passenger seat. 

These cutoffs are governed by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 as part of the “advanced airbag” rule, which went into effect for the 2007 model year. Manufacturers use a combination of suppression and low-risk deployment strategies for the passenger airbag. Suppression strategies deactivate the bag entirely in certain scenarios, while low-risk deployment strategies are designed to inflate the bag in such a way that it will not cause severe injury to an out-of-position occupant of a certain size. 

Driver airbags only use low-risk deployment strategies, typically certified with a 5th percentile female (about 5’0, 110 lbs) dummy. 

The earliest passenger airbag cutoffs, first introduced in 1995 by BMW and soon adopted by a few other manufacturers, such as Mercedes and Hyundai, were designed to reduce repair costs in crashes when the passenger seat was empty. These early cutoffs were not designed with child safety in mind and typically had low weight thresholds to activate the bag – often less than 30 pounds. They also often did not include status lights on the dashboard. The first cutoffs designed with child safety in mind began to appear in the 2003 model year, with the issuance of advanced airbag standards. These cutoffs spread rapidly in the years leading up to 2007, when the advanced airbag rule went into full effect. 

The data for this chart was gained from reviewing owners’ manuals for the models and years in question as well as the appendix from this research paper.