I think we could arguably all admit to being a little neglectful here and there when it comes to vehicle maintenance. When a light appears on the dash, we may or may not pretend we haven’t seen it for a couple of days; if a strange sound starts to omit from the rear end, perhaps we turn a blind ear until we can’t ignore it anymore.
I drive a 2005 pickup truck, and because of its age, lights tend to come and go on my dash more often than not. I’ve taken it to a mechanic who has run a scanner on the code lights appearing, and most of them are nothing major and don’t require tremendous worrying.
A while ago, the airbag light on the passenger side of my truck lit up, and I thought nothing of it. The light was on all the time in my old truck, so perhaps I subconsciously began to tune this new one out in my current truck, but it certainly got my attention a couple of days ago.
I had just gotten in my truck with our dog, Lenny, and was about to leave to go to my parent’s farm nearby. I hadn’t even started the truck; rather, the keys were in the ignition, and Lenny was sitting on my centre console as she usually does. I looked down at my phone and the next thing I knew, the entire cab was full of a haze and I thought my eardrums blew.
In the midst of the chaos I realized Lenny had thankfully bolted into the backseat at the last minute, and I saw the passenger-side airbag hanging out of my dashboard. The thing erupted without any prompting, and again, the truck wasn’t even on or moving. It scared the living shit out of me and my dog, and the situation could have been far worse if I had been driving.
Check your airbags, people. Please.
Photo by Harry Shelton on Unsplash
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