NHTSA Complaint #11493246 — 2014 BUICK ENCLAVE

I was sitting in a drivethru line and reached down to tighten my seat belt because it felt lose and the entire steel cord that attaches the seatbelt to the front outboard seating snapped in half. There is a steel cord/cable that connects the pretensioner to the seat belt. This 1 inch thick cord was unraveled and severed. This gave me great concern because this cord was likely on the verge of snapping for many weeks prior to it snapping. A steel cord doesn't just randomly snap in half - so if I had I had a crash prior to it fully breaking - I could have been injured. In addition, I had to drive my vehicle with this defect until new parts could be ordered. I drove around for roughly 2 weeks with a non-functioning seat belt because I could not afford to rent a vehicle while I was waiting for mine to be repaired. When I took it to a shop for repair, they told me they had never seen anything like it in their 30 years of repairs. I have all receipts and documentation, and I have the original faulty part. To recap, I have never been a crash in the vehicle and cord snapping in half happened when I was sitting still and not moving. There is a recall on 2009-2014 Buick Enclaves for this exact issue, but my vehicle's VIN number does not fall within the recall. Specifically, the recall is for the flexible steel cable that connects the seatbelt to the front outboard seating may fatigue and separate over time. This is exactly what happened to mine, but it was not covered and I was never notified of the issue. I don't want someone to be in a wreck with a faulty/non-working seatbelt.