I've been a loyal and happy Skoda Roomster owner for many years... up until now. I've joined this forum hoping to shed some light on what may have caused both the driver and front passenger airbags (Takata) to explode as the Roomster's front bumper lightly grazed a low concrete platform, at a petrol station, during a reversing/turning manoeuvre.

I'll move this to the Roomster section for you.

Welcome Tessa.

Wow, that sounds awful. My recommendation would be to see if you can have the vehicle scanned for any fault codes that may have been present. There will certainly be some from the airbag deployment.

Welcome Tessa.

Wow, that sounds awful. My recommendation would be to see if you can have the vehicle scanned for any fault codes that may have been present. There will certainly be some from the airbag deployment.

I think once the airbags have deployed the airbag controller stops talking normally and just comes up with "crash data stored "

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we had a similar issue a few years ago when i worked at vauxhall 

 

the first generation of corsa d 2006 onwards had overactive air bag sensors meaning virtually kissing anything above 5mph caused both front air bags to be deployed had a few people coming in reporting airbag deployment in traffic jam bumping causing deployment 

 

have you had the car from new ???

 

is there any signs of a previous repair on the front end 

Thanks for the replies, am impressed at how quickly you responded! 

I bought the Roomster brand new in August 2014 and the airbag incident happened 8 weeks ago in Auxerre, France. Because 'Skoda European Assistance' (AA) deemed it as an "accident", their only immediate obligation was to get the immobilized vehicle to the nearest Skoda/VW garage for repair (replacement of airbags, seatbelts and the data computer) which was estimated to take up to 3 weeks.. It get's worse... before leaving the UK for our short (3 day) trip to France, I very stupidly hadn't checked with 'Direct Line Car Insurance' whether the car was fully covered in Europe (BIG MISTAKE) and discovered that night (in hospital, I suffered facial/eye/nose injuries) that I was only covered for 3rd party liability. This meant I was financially liable for all repairs (£1500), expenses and car hire in the UK (£325) whilst waiting for the repairs to be completed in France. Thankfully the AA paid to get us back home... a French hire car to Calais and then an English hire car from Calais to Canterbury for 24 hours. After endless discussions with the AA and 'Skoda Customer Services', as to who (if anyone) was actually liable to get me back down to Auxerre to collect the car, it was agreed that the AA would pay. Although I looked like a panda for several weeks, the car just has a scrape on the bumper... many lessons (particularly about insurance) learnt. Also I was probably sitting too close to the steering wheel, so after 42 years of driving in one position, I now sit as far away from the pedals as is safe. Unfortunately all recording data was cleared and the French garage won't release any diagnostic paperwork ("data protection") so my 'case' is flimsy. Although I keep maintaining that the airbags shouldn't have exploded in the first place, the garages in both France and Canterbury (where I bought the cart from) say it was perfectly reasonable for them to go off. F R U S T R A T E D!