The airbag light first came on a couple days ago on startup and stayed illuminated until I shut the engine off. I restarted it a few minutes later and the airbag light flashed 7 times before turning off. It does that on every start now.

My mechanic buddy used a scanner to try to find the problem and the only trouble code it showed relating to the airbag system is U1096. The description the scanner gave was something about "loss of IPC communication" and a bunch of long-winded technical jargon that I interpreted to mean whatever module is responsible for the airbags isn't communicating properly with the instrument cluster.

Is anybody familiar with this issue and/or trouble code? What do I need to do to fix it? I'm not bad with tools but I know next to nothing about automotive electrical components.

 

It's supposed to flash 7 times. That's its self diagostic check. Possibly you never noticed it before but now you are lazer focused on it.