If someone breaks into your car, you might assume they wanted to steal it, or they were looking for valuables. However, these days, a lot of break-ins are all about parts, with thieves targeting specific models for the precious airbags inside.
As covered by WUSA9 in December, recent months have seen an uptick in airbag thefts in Maryland. This month, ABC7 has said the same of San Francisco. Meanwhile, CBS News reported a wave of vehicle break-ins across Pennsylvania last year that followed much the same pattern. A similar spate of robberies hit the news back in 2023 and 2024, both times in the Pittsburgh region.
In all of the above cases, Hondas were the prime target. What was once a simple safety device has now become a prized item in the illicit auto parts trade.
Easy Removal, High Demand
Every vehicle on the market comes with airbags these days. However, there are reasons why Hondas are more commonly targeted by thieves. Speaking to CBS News, Premier Auto Body proprietor Jay Coll noted that it’s particularly easy to remove airbags from these vehicles. “If you know how to do it, [it takes] 20 seconds, 30 seconds,” Coll told the outlet. “Some have some bolts in them and some are just pushing them out, just pushing a couple pins and it’s releasing.” It also pays for thieves to target popular models, for which there is a greater demand for parts.
It’s not really limited to one model, per se. Thieves will target all the major Hondas—from Civics to CR-Vs to Accords. Other brands get hit, too, but it’s Honda’s name that pops up most often in the news reports.
Supply issues frustrate the problem on both fronts. High prices and a lack of spare parts from dealers increase the demand for airbags from less-legitimate sources, incentivizing theft. Then those who have their airbags stolen will face a harder time getting a factory replacement while parts are hard to come by. Across Reddit, frustrated owners are complaining about struggling to get their cars repaired due to parts remaining on backorder.
With dealerships unable to offer replacements for some time in many cases, this can leave cars off the road. “It might take weeks just to get the part, it could be months depending on how new the car is, so it could just sit there without the airbag in it,” said Coll. In some cases, a spate of stolen airbags could push owners to hunt for replacements from the very black market that caused their problem in the first place.
Selling an airbag doesn’t have to be hard, either. Facebook Marketplace is full of adverts for used Honda airbags. It’s impossible to tell at a glance whether any given listing is for stolen parts or from a genuine seller with a parts car. This lack of clarity makes it easy to offload stolen parts. Airbags for the Accord, Civic, and CR-V are commonly listed online for anywhere from $100 to over $500.
It’s not just a local problem. The National Insurance Crime Bureau states that around 50,000 airbags are stolen each year. The agency states that the black market is spurred on by the high price of OEM replacement airbags, which is often on the order of $1000. In comparison, black market airbags can be much more attractive, commonly selling for $50 to 200. The report also states that there is an incentive for “unscrupulous collision repair shops” to install black market airbags while charging insurance companies full price for factory replacements. The NICB advises owners to use only reputable collision repair shops, and to inspect any replacement airbags before installation if possible.
As for prevention, the typical tactics against auto theft are all you can really rely on. You can fit your steering wheel with some kind of lock, and park in a well-lit area or off the street, and hope that’s enough. Unfortunately, in many cases, dedicated and professional thieves are often able to overcome basic countermeasures quite easily.
A demonstration from The National Desk showed an airbag can be stolen in under a minute with the right tools. The vehicle shown appears to be a Honda Fit.
Airbags are a critical piece of automotive safety equipment. It’s why reputable shops will only purchase new factory parts. Still, there is enough demand out there for cheaper alternatives to keep the black market alive. Hondas just happen to be a particularly juicy target, and they keep hitting the news when the airbag thieves are out in force.
Image credits: Honda, Facebook Marketplace via screenshot, Reddit via screenshot, The National Desk via Youtube screenshot
Top graphic images: Honda; depositphotos.com
It’s Nissan Maxima headlights all over again
Colleagues of mine travelling to the Detroit area would actively avoid having late-model GM rentals as they would regularly have their rental cars broken into to have the airbags removed – usually a hapless Chevy Malibu.
It’s both less and more stressful when it’s a rental car and you’re a long way from home and questioning the security of where you’re working.
They don’t just steal the airbags from Malibu’s, they just yank the whole column. https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/steering-wheel-column-stolen-in-seconds-as-police-say-gm-cars-are-being-targeted
Always seems like someone will figure out a technique for a particular make/generation of a vehicle and then teach it to all the scumbags in the area, leading to a spate of break-ins and thefts of, say, late-90s Nissans in one city, until they’re all ruined or secured. Then they figure out, say, early-00s Subarus and the cycle repeats.
Police should set up a booby-trapped Honda to entice these scum. Lock ’em up. Rinse. Repeat. ( Same thing they should have done for all the KiaBoys, of which I’m a victim )
For crimes like this we need to make sure the punishment is very time intensive. You fuck up someone’s day and cost them a lot more than you’ll make from the theft of the airbag, same shit goes for catalytic converters. Have these bastards clearing underbrush in our forests and shit.
If you’re gonna steal shit, steal useless yet valuable shit.
Car parts need to come down in price to prevent this. As long as airbags can get $100 a pop, or Ford Truck taillights can get you several hundred dollars, they’ll always be targets. What we need is no airbags and sealed-beam headlights.
I think a better idea is severely punishing perpetrators (including the body shops) rather than sacrificing the safety of my own vehicles, but maybe that’s just me.
I think more realistically, closing the places one can sell a stolen airbag will be the most effective. Similar to how catalytic converters are pretty tightly regulated, and shops which accept stolen goods get in pretty big trouble.
Do the airbags have serials tied to the car? If so, police should be checking all these ‘for sale’ listings on Facebook. My bet is 95 percent are stolen. Unfortunately cops don’t really care about property stolen from us peasants.
Can confirm. I found my bike on Facebook marketplace and the useless fucking detective said he reached out to the thief/seller, and that the thief said he’d bought it from a friend who’d bought it at a storage auction and there was nothing he could do. I’m still pissed, I loved that bike.
My Honda still has a recalled Takata airbag (I live dangerously). So the joke’s on them.
And it someone steals the catalytic converters from my BMW, they’re in for a disappointing surprise.
this is the first thing I thought of, looking at the ebay airbags.. probably 90% of those are Takata. So install your new airbag, that will explode and kill you at some random point in the future..
This is one of those parts that I’d never buy used.
If they steal my Fit’s airbag, well I guess there’s still a seatbelt, that was good enough for my first thirty years of driving..
Is this the moment for the resurgence of The Club?
“I’m gonna need, like, 17 Clubs please.”
–modern cars
I was thinking heads on pikes, but I guess clubs might be a reasonable first step.
Or if all else fails, a 9mm Glock or the ratcheting “click-click” from a Remington pump action 12 gauge will certainly make some thieves have a different perspective on life!
“Hello,this is John Wick…”
“Yes, that John Wick…”
“I’m going to need “dinner reservations” for 3!!”
You get the idea!
There are so many Kias with clubs in my apartment complex. I didn’t realize they were still around. I kind of want to stockpile pagers and Tomagotchis to get in on the ground floor of old solutions to novel problems.
Might be time for Trunk Monkey to make a comeback
What’s that saying about history repeating itself? A couple decades ago or so Hondas were targeted for their radios. Now airbags.
They also apparently make popular “bait cars” for police departments to use.
Radios,airbags or the vehicles themselves! If it has the Honda insignia on it,it was fair game! That’s why insurance premiums are so damn high on them! I actually did insurance quote comparisons between a brand new (at the time) 2019 Chevy Camaro and Honda Civic hatchback- the Camaro was actually cheaper (by $330 dollars a year or $27.50 a month).
Who would’ve thought a sports car from GM would be cheaper than an economy car? Now airbags can run anywhere from $100 to $1200,and that’s just the airbag itself,not including the inflation hardware and of course installation and labor will be extra!
My daughter’s timeworn ’03 Civic was broken into a couple of years ago. When she told me, my first thought was: What kind of low-effort car thief targets a 20-year-old Civic–and then fails to steal it? But when I actually saw the state of the steering column, I knew they were after the airbag. They didn’t get it, must have been scared off. But I guess the lesson is, old cars aren’t immune.
I, for one, demand that my body shop have scruples, and I don’t mean sh*tty board games in the waiting room. Burnt coffee and 3-year-old issues of Motor Trend, too.
This seems like a good case for manufacturers to try to undercut (or come close) to the black market because that gap is just too large.
I’ll never forget, in 2006 I smacked a deer up in Minnesota, but still made it home to Chicago. The airbag deployed, but I just cut it out with a knife and closed the steering wheel pad with duct tape. I called the insurance and they wanted it to go to a local body shop for the damage estimate.
The lady was like, “Don’t you need it towed? You can’t drive it without the airbag!”
Uh, lady, I just drove it 400 miles home without an airbag. I think I can make it 5 miles to a body shop!
I also pointed out to her that we ALL drove around in cars without airbags for over 100 years.
And duh, of course I wear my seat belt.
It took a little bit to explain to the insurance rep why “did the airbag deploy” wasn’t actually a relevant question after someone rear-ended the old Toyota pickup I was driving.
This ties to something I was thinking while reading the article. Are people really leaving their car sitting for sometimes months just because the airbag was stolen? They can’t ALL have full coverage and have insurance covering a rental. Get the part on order and then just go back to driving the car. Its not perfect, but it seems a damn sight better than paying for months worth of rental cars.
Exactly. It reminded me of a single mother of two daughters who told me things were tough at home because one of the bathrooms was getting new paint and wallpaper, so it was out of commision and they had to all use one bathroom.
I said, “Can’t you use the bathroom without wallpaper?”
And she said, “No, that would be unthinkable. How can you use a bathroom without wallpaper?”