A couple of weeks ago my aging 1999 Audi A6 Avant decided to start flickering a little red light at me. Kind of like the car was winking at me. A couple of days later, it decided to just blast the light at me. You can see it in the image here, it’s the “Air Bag” light. Sadly, that doesn’t mean your air bags are great. It means they are totally broken, kaput.

Resurrect missing image "Airbag Light flickr.com/3209/2361334568_d8d9e60801_m"

I took it into the shop for other work and got an estimate to fix this air bag situation. Turns out the controller card fails a checksum validation. I had the exact same thing happen with my ABS controller card too and had to replace that. The air bag controller card weighed in at $1,200 to replace. Ouch!

On one hand, this is safety and you shouldn’t cut corners. $1,200 is a small price to pay if the air bags keep you safe. On the other hand, $1,200 is a boat load of money to pour into an older car and I wear my seat belts all the time.

What would you do?