Toyota Is Recalling More Than 800,000 Cars Because of Spiders
Shutterstock/Chris Godfrey PhotographyToyota has announced that it is recalling 870,000 of its vehicles, among them Camrys, Venzas, Avalons, and hybrids with owners spread across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and 16 other countries. Airbags, it seems, have been spontaneously deploying on some of those vehicles across makes and model years—a state of affairs that can range from the merely annoying to the legitimately life-threatening. Power steering, even more ominously, may also be affected. As may cars' warning lights.
The difficulty stems, Toyota believes, from a problem with a part included in the cars' elaborate air-conditioning systems. Water from the cars' condensers has been leaking onto the airbags' control modules, which seems in turn to cause the bags to deploy independently of the typical triggers.
The condenser, however, isn't the only cause of the airbags' spontaneous inflation. The other one? Spiders. Yes, spiders. Which is not an auto-industry euphemism. Arachnids have been weaving their webs inside the cars' condensers—and the webs, in turn, have done what nature has designed them to do: trip things up. Bugs in cars, it seems, make for buggy cars.
The eight-legged problem is not widespread; the recall is, as recalls often are, a matter of better-safe-than-sorry. "So far, Toyota is aware of three airbag deployments as a result of this and 35 cases of warning lights coming on," Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight told CNN. And yet the factor that seems to be common among those incidents is the spiders. In the cases Toyota has investigated so far, CNN notes, "the only consistent cause of the blockages" has been the webs.
In other words: Toyota owners, this Halloween season, are finding themselves the unwitting and unwilling stars of an incredibly nerdy horror movie. And they're not the first to be playing that role. In 2011, Mazda recalled more than 50,000 of its Mazda6 sedans after the company realized that the vent lines for the model's gas tank could be compromised by, yep, spider webs. Which is all to say, this October, that if you're scared of spiders ... you're probably totally justified.
If anyone remembers my abandoned haunted ride run....this is in the same vein. I love this Facebook page that features abandoned places in Japan.
This one really creeped me out.
It is a temple, that turned out to be a scam. They were taking money from people to protect the souls of the dead, rooms filled with "spirit tablets" They promised to pray over them and protect them....then he disappeared.
Here is what is left of the shrine and the pictures are nothing short of beautiful. I know it is not technically a graveyard. But it is close enough for me.
Taping an inexpensive skeleton or pumpkin cutout to your door is the perfect way to let neighbors know you don’t have your life together.
It’s actually really easy to make cobwebs by dying your hair white and ripping it out.
Have you considered a large air-blown inflatable lawn decoration of a jack-o’-lantern or black cat? Ugh, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Glue some googly eyes to a Styrofoam coffee cup to make your own creepy coffee creature!
Hire a maid from a cleaning service and then lock her in a closet. Her kicks and screams will provide a festively “spooktacular” soundtrack to your Halloween party.
A great prank on trick-or-treaters is to dress as an inert decorative scarecrow in a rocking chair on your porch, then when children come to the door, spring from the chair swinging kitchen knives and scream “I’m going to drag you to fucking Hell” at the top of your lungs.
Place one witch hat in the middle of your porch.
A dead pet swinging from the blade of a ceiling fan makes a bone-chilling decoration. Put tiny vampire teeth in its mouth for extra laughs.
As always, put up memorial gravestones to honor your aunt Ima Goner and uncle U.R. Next, both of whom died in the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
If you’re not going to spend $600 on a motion-activated Headless Horseman, you might as well just call the whole thing off.
Make your house into its very own jack-o’-lantern by using a saw to hack two eyes and a jagged smile into it, and then burning the whole thing down.
