Mercedes-Benz Recalls Vehicles For Seat Belt Problems

November 22, 2019 — Mercedes-Benz is recalling more than 33,000 vehicles because the seat belts may be correctly fastened but the systems detect them as unfastened. This will cause deactivations of the seat belt pretensioners and other functions.

2018 Mercedes-Benz E400 Wagon 4Matic
2018 Mercedes-Benz E400 4Matic
2018 Mercedes-Benz E43 AMG 4Matic
2018-2019 Mercedes-Benz E63S AMG 4Matic Wagon
2018-2019 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG 4Matic Wagon
2018-2019 Mercedes-Benz E300
2018-2019 Mercedes-Benz E300 4Matic
2018-2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC63S Coupe AMG 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz CLS450
2019 Mercedes-Benz CLS450 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz CLS53 AMG 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz E450 Wagon
2019 Mercedes-Benz E53 AMG 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC300
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC63 AMG Coupe 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz G550 4MATIC
2019 Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC300 Coupe 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC300 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC350e 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC43 AMG Coupe 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC43 AMG 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC63 AMG 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GT63 AMG 4-door 4Matic
2019 Mercedes-Benz GT63S AMG 4-door 4Matic

The automaker received complaints in October 2018 about securely latched seat belt buckles that occupants believed were not latched. Mercedes collected the parts and was able to duplicate the problem, but engineers couldn't find the root cause.

According to Mercedes:

"Through numerous tests on actual seat belt buckles, the analysis revealed that the failure could occur with seat belt buckle housings from one specific sub-supplier, if the latch plate was intentionally inserted in a skewed orientation into the buckle."

More problems were reported in 2019, and Mercedes eventually determined, "unfavorable tolerances between seat belt buckle housing of this specific sub-supplier and the belt buckle were identified as the root cause of the issue."

Occupants will notice warning signals on the instrument clusters and hear audible warnings as soon as the vehicles are started.

There are 29,679 recalled vehicles in the U.S. and 3,569 in Canada.

Mercedes dealers will inspect the front seat belt buckles and replace them if needed once the U.S. recall begins December 31, 2019.

U.S. owners may contact the automaker at 800-367-6372.

Canadian customers may call 800-387-0100.