Many used car buyers are completely unaware that their airbags might not deploy in the event of an accident. There are a few reasons for this, but the most prevalent is a scam in which a car that's experienced a previous collision has had its deployed airbag improperly replaced, sometimes with stolen airbag units from other cars and sometimes with nothing more than stuff like packing peanuts or whatever else was lying around the shop. Being that Carfax offers a service attempting to expose every little detail about a car's history that's available, the company has decided to release information about a car's airbag deployment history for free. The new service doesn't appear to be available from the home page by entering a candidate car's VIN number, but rather from this separate page. We tested it out with a few VINs culled from Autotrader and have yet to find one with an active deployment history. On the other hand, Carfax admits it doesn't have complete records for every airbag deployment that's ever happened. Nevertheless, the database, while perhaps incomplete, contains useful info for those considering the purchase of a used car that's seen some crunch time.
Source: Carfax
