Maintenance
Inadvertent airbag deployment while the vehicle is being serviced can result in severe injury, and an improperly installed or defective airbag unit may not operate or perform as intended. Some countries impose restrictions on the sale, transport, handling, and service of airbags and system components. In Germany, airbags are regulated as harmful explosives; only mechanics with special training are allowed to service airbag systems.
Some automakers (such as Mercedes-Benz) call for the replacement of undeployed airbags after a certain period of time to ensure their reliability in an accident. One example is the 1992 S500 which has an expiry date sticker attached to the door pillar. Some Škoda vehicles say 14 years from the date of manufacture. In this case replacement would be uneconomic as the car would have negligible value at 14 years old, far less than the cost of fitting new airbags. Volvo, on the other hand, has stated "airbags do not require replacement during the lifetime of the vehicle," though this cannot be taken as a guarantee on the device.
Read more about this topic: Air Bags
Famous quotes containing the word maintenance:
“It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“My course is a firm assertion and maintenance of the rights of the colored people of the South according to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, coupled with a readiness to recognize all Southern people, without regard to past political conduct, who will now go with me heartily and in good faith in support of these principles.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)