We get it. For you, the Dodge Viper owner, every day follows a set schedule. You wake up, you remember you own the most absurd car from 2005, and then you prance around in it, getting single-digit fuel mileage and laughing because you can, in fact, afford the impracticality of such a car.
But perhaps your laughter should hold off until you visit a dealership, because your Viper has been recalled for the rather pertinent discovery that its airbags could randomly go off in your face. That discovery, of course, comes roughly 15 years after its manufacturing.
Better late than never, right?
Fiat Chrysler recently submitted recall documents to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for 3,329 Dodge Vipers from the 2005 and 2006 model years, listing the estimated amount with the defect at 100 percent. Those Vipers equipped an occupant-restraint control module that could randomly deploy the car’s airbags and/or seat-belt pretensioners, which tighten seat belts in the case of a crash in order to keep the people inside of a car from flying.
That can lead to a crash or injury, to put it mildly, as it would with an airbag exploded in your face, and FCA said that an airbag warning light “may or may not precede an inadvertent deployment of the airbags and/or seat belt pretensioners.” As of last month, FCA said it’s not aware of any crashes but does know of one injury “potentially related to the issue.”
It would be easy to assume that this whole airbag saga has been going on for a while given the age of the car, and that would be correct. Recall documents say FCA had a similar recall for certain cars in 2015,including the 2003 and 2004 Viper, before hearing of a random airbag deployment in a 2005 Viper in January. After some investigation, that complaint eventually led to this recall.
FCA said in addition to fixing it, it’ll reimburse owners who have paid to repair the problem in the past and have the proper receipts. Both owners and dealers are scheduled to be informed about the recall on Jan. 31, which hopefully won’t give them enough time to be unknowingly hit with an airbag on the way to the grocery store before getting their car fixed.
But hey, sometimes you have to risk it in order to complete your all-important daily routine of climbing into the Viper for a casual drive yet again, for no reason other than to laugh at how hilarious you look.
(No, you don’t. Leave the car in the garage for a month.)
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