98 that wants to kill me
 

about 99.8% of the time when i drive my airbag light stays on...give it to me straight doc...will my airbag deploy randomly and kill me? oh yeah and what do you think the problem is?

no it wont deploy at all thats the problem, the light means system has devoloped a fault and has shut its self off.
you need to get it into a dealer or airbag specialist, repairs are specialised and beyond most home mechanics.

but no to answer your question it wont go off and kill you.

If anything you can go offroading, hit a few small trees when you lose traction and actually save yourself the spinal/nose damage that it would cause... as long as you're wearing your seat belt.

Also don't have to get a new steering wheel/air bag.

For a vehicle that is mostly offroad use, I wouldn't worry about it. But I don't know your situation.

Sorry to put a practically irrelevant post, but it is in the same vein. About 10 years ago my mom hit a Honda that ran a stop sign in her '93 zj and the airbag deployed. But she had a brushguard installed improperly and the airbag light on the dash was on. Why would it deploy if the light was on? Even though i'm glad it did, i'm curious.

Some time there can be faults in the system that dont disable the entire system. Just like a check engine light it may say that a sensor has high or zero resistance but it doesnt stop the engine from running unless that sensor is causing it not to run. Not the same car but I used to work for Hyundai and I would always get air bag lights for high resistance in the side air bags for driver and passenger (airbag came out the side of the seat). The problem always was that there was a connector under the seats and people would store/throw everything under the seat pushing on the connector causeing the high resistance. Now if you got into an accident that required airbag deployment the system would try to deploy the airbags. And which ever ones that can deploy would even though the airbag light is on. It just lets you know there is a problem. Now if you have an SRS computer failure that is a different situation in which case your airbag system is shot, but it is better to get it checked out and fixed cause hopefully not but you may need it to work properly one day.