My airbag light keeps flashing

BlackCherry

Member
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2002 Mazda Protege 5
Here's the story:
A couple months back I was driving with two of my friends. Regular driving nothing out of the ordinary, we went to ihop had breakfast. The norm. Ok, well after we had breakfast and stuff we all got back into my p5 and we headed home. I noticed that the airbag light was flashing. It wasn't previously flashing, it just started then. So I pulled over turned the car off, and turned it back on. Still flashing. So I headed home and dropped my friends off. After dropping them off, I was on my way home myself, and I guess I took a sharp turn too fast? Well I went off road and took out two fence posts. Minimal damage. Crack on the bumper below fog lights. Cracked the grill (p5's a tank lol) This was a couple of months ago, nothing recent

Here's what I'm wondering:
Is the sensor messed up? If I hit those fence posts without the light flashing would the airbags have gone off? I hit it pretty hard.

Here's my concern:
Could the airbags deploy on me with regular driving? If I get into a major accident would the airbags deploy?

Here's my question:
How important is this to get fixed? How much would it cost to fix, should I be worried about anything else?
 
in my experience from reading around in car forums, blinking airbag light means your airbag needs to be serviced/looked at.
 
Is the sensor messed up? If I hit those fence posts without the light flashing would the airbags have gone off? I hit it pretty hard.

No way to know what is causing the flashing airbag light.

From your description of that collision it doesn't sound like the car decelerated fast enough to trigger an airbag deployment. That is, the damage to the car was very minor, suggesting that the forces involved weren't going to slow down a 3000 pound car very much. The fence posts probably weighed, what, 3 pounds?

Get it checked out, if your next collision is more severe you do want the airbags to work. The repair could easily be something as simple as tightening up a loose connection somewhere.
 
Airbags aren't something to mess around with for sure. Do you have side airbags as well? I was having the flashing airbag light problem for a while, and it was the connections underneath the seats for the side airbags. I disconnected them, cleaned them and reconnected them, and it solve the problem. You might want to look into that as well. I would guess your collision was not enough to trigger the airbags.
 
^yep. Follow the manual on de-energizing the system before working on it! It gets dangerous/expensive FAST.
 
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