Your mechanic is what my tutors in
Baltimore call "forces working against reduction of road traffic
injuries". Let me explain:
You want airbags in your car. You
really do; all the time. If, God forbid, you have an accident then you will
need airbags in your car.
Your mechanic asking you to remove
airbags from your car because of a warning light is akin to your watchman
asking you to pull down your fence and front gate because the hedge is
overgrown or the hinges are squeaky — creation of a much worse situation in the
quest to solve a virtual non-issue. There is only one response to that:
"Are you serious right now?"
That is the devil of
disinformation trying to lead you down the garden path that terminates in blood
and tears. Do not remove the airbags from your car.
FLAWED AIRBAGS
There was the scandal involving
Takata airbags that were installed in millions of cars, but that is too long a
saga for me to fully explain. But the gist of it is this: a large batch of
Takata airbags were flawed in that they used the wrong chemical (an ammonium
nitrate derivative) as a propellant, a chemical which most likely will go off
with more force than is required, thus destroying the metal cartridge that acts
as a housing for the same propellant and turning the housing into shrapnel. In
essence, your potential lifesaver transforms into a Mills Bomb and there is a
high probability you be fragged in your own car, even in a low speed accident.
How low? One expectant woman had metal fragments slice into her neck and end
her life after the airbags deployed in a 30km/h crash and hurled the
projectiles right at her face with explosive force. Thirty kilometres per hour.
That's not all. The propellant
used did not contain a drying agent, so sometimes not even a crash was
necessary to set off the killer pillows. A little wetness or high temperature —
or even age — would suffice, then boom! It's the trenches for you, son. Older
cars with faulty Takata airbags were literally time bombs without the
clock-faced readout. You would be driving along and a little unheard voice
would go "The Apocalypse will be any minute now, sir". You'd never
hear that voice, but you will hear the airbags go off at the wrong moment, and
completely unprovoked (at least to you). That would probably be the last thing
you hear as well.
RECALL
To say that this caused a stink
after 23 deaths and 300 injuries (and counting) would be to understate things.
Nineteen different car manufactures were mired in this goo and the eventual
tally of vehicles listed for recall to stop them from being the scenes of
second degree murder came to a record 42 million (and counting): the biggest
automotive recall in the history of mankind.
A total of 42 million is a lot of
cars, and they are spread as far afield as New Zealand though patient zero (and
rabid snitching by Takata execs) helped investigators trace the problem to a
factory in Mexico. I will not tell you whether or not your car is among the
affected, but who knows? Like I said, 42 million is a lot of cars.
I didn't think there were 42
million cars on Earth, let alone carrying live grenades within their steering
columns. The NHTSA and various other bodies have online VIN checkers from which
you can confirm the worst. I would be typing furiously into the Google's search
bar if I were you right now …
That aside, let's move on. Your
insurance asked you to notify them once the airbags deploy because that is one
of the first parameters they pick up on to determine whether or not to write
off a car. You will discover why that is so in a bit …
NOT AN OPTION
Yours is quite the quandary, sir.
The decision is hard: drive the car as is and risk the airbag exploding in your
face unprovoked leading to a chain of unfortunate events that could be
potentially fatal or remove the airbags and rue the day you chose that option
when a mere 45km/h head-on collision claims your life or leaves you severely
maimed when you are impaled by your deformed vehicle.
If the airbags don't deploy by
themselves, driving around with the warning light unresolved amounts to the
same thing as having no airbags: they will not deploy in the event of an
accident. You are on your own. You need to fix that light, and pronto.
Reinstalling the airbags is not
really an option; this is a highly sensitive and carefully calibrated safety
system that mere garages are incapable of fully restoring with any amount of
accuracy or guarantee — that's why cars are written off once the airbags
deploy, even with minimal structural and mechanical damage.
Only franchised and authorised
dealerships have the permission of manufacturers to reinstall airbags (more so
following the Takata recall) and even then, not all of them qualify.
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