Deactivating auto air bags can be costly

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 30, 1998

While it's legal to disconnect a car's air bags, it isn't cheap or easy. Dealers refuse to do so for fear of lawsuits, and do-it-yourselfers often foul things up.

Howard Hoge, a resident of Upper Marlboro, Md., wanted to turn off the air bags in his Buick LeSabre because his elderly wife feared injury A slight 4 feet 11 inches, she fit the "at-risk" profile of people injured by air bags. Hoge sent the required forms to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and eventually received permission to deactivate the bags in the Buick. Getting the work done, however, turned out to be nigh impossible.

"The dealer we bought our car from wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole," recalls Hoge. "Neither would several other dealers we tried. They're all afraid of being sued." While General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Corp. and the import manufacturers have kits available to defeat the air bags in their cars and trucks, they have no way of compelling their dealers to install them.

"We live in an extremely litigious age," says William Noack, a communications director with GM. "The dealer is an independent businessman; GM can't do more than make the hardware available [to disconnect the bags]. It's the dealer's decision, ultimately, whether he wants to perform the service."

Nicole Solomon of Chrysler agrees but believes dealers may become less worried about lawsuits given the nature of the cutoff switches and the fact that customers who install them must sign waivers. "We're still in the early stages of this," she says. "Eventually, we expect our dealers to see they are secure so far as legal responsibility" is concerned.

Even so, dealers are understandably gun-shy. If Hoge loans his car to a friend, they argue, and the friend is killed in an accident, they could be liable. It would be naive to imagine that a rapacious personal-injury lawyer wouldn't seize upon such a case as an opportunity to dig deep into someone else's pockets.

Hoge eventually found a dealer willing to deactivate his air bags -- but the charge was astonishingly high. Cutoff switches (there are two) cost a gut-punching $267. The dealer added a labor charge estimated at $300.

So Hoge is back to square one, refusing to drop up to $900 on a repair charge he never anticipated. But his car, as a consequence, gathers dust. "My wife won't get near that Buick until the bags are turned off and she doesn't want me to use it, either," he says. "So here I am with a new car sitting in the driveway that no one can drive."

Attempting to deactivate the bags at home is not much of an alternative, either, since the work is complex and requires specialized knowledge and tools. A "shade-tree mechanic" inadvertently could cause the bags to deploy while trying to turn them off, necessitating replacement of the steering wheel (which houses the driver's-side air bag) and expensive repacking of the passenger's-side air bag (which is built into the dashboard).

"I'm just disgusted by the whole business," says Hoge. "The government makes us pay for these devices we don't want and that are dangerous, then expects us to pay through the nose to have them removed. It's a real mess.

RELATED ARTICLE: Check Engine? Don't Panic

For all the good it does, that disheartening little dashboard light that reads "check engine" might as well say "Guess what's wrong?" -- or "You lose!"

People understandably are befuddled by this unfriendly little indicator, which can be a harbinger of mechanical doom or merely a suggestion for a tune-up. On most modern cars, check engine can mean that the oil level is low or that the engine is running hot. Sometimes, it's something altogether more mysterious -- an electrical fault or internal poltergeist (the latter being the hardest to fix).

Typically, however, check engine has a fairly benign meaning. The light is wired to the vehicle's emissions system and designed to go off when oxygen sensor goes bad.

The oxygen sensor is a probe that screws into the exhaust pipe ahead of the catalytic converter. Its job is to sample the exhaust stream and send information to the engine computer, which uses that information to optimize the air/fuel ration for ideal combustion and lowest emissions. An uneven air/fuel ration can result in expensive problems; if the catalytic converter becomes fouled, replacements run several hundred dollars.

By dint of its location, the oxygen sensor needs to be replaced occasionally (every 15,000 to 50,000 miles, depending on the make and model). Should check engine light up, don't panic. It may just mean it's time for a new oxygen sensor. If this is the problem, take the car into a shop at your convenience -- so long as you don't wait more than a week.