Does anyone here have experience with a front seat occupancy sensor emulator? [View all]

[rzemanfl]

My 14-year-old Hyundai started displaying an "Air Bag" warning light. The diagnosis at the repair shop was a bad sensor in the front passenger seat. The estimated cost of repair was between a thousand and eighteen hundred dollars, depending on whether the whole seat needed to be replaced or just the bottom part under the upholstery. I found a front seat "occupancy sensor emulator" on the Internet for under ninety dollars delivered. It appears to bypass the sensor in the seat and send a signal that there is always someone sitting in the front passenger seat. The only drawback I can see, assuming it works as promised, is that in an accident, the passenger side bag would inflate even if there was no one sitting there. I figure in a car that old, any accident that would trigger the airbags would probably result in the car being written off as a total wreck. I never drive with anyone other than an adult in that seat, so there is no danger of the bag hitting a child.

If anyone has any experience with something like this, I would appreciate hearing from you. I was ready to spend the thousand-dollar final estimated cost of repairs until I came across this alternative that may save me around nine hundred bucks. When I get the part in the mail in a week or two and it's installed, I will update this post. In the meantime, I will stay off highways.