I was pulling the plastic hood latch handle to open the hood (that handle right by your left leg when you are in the driver seat)... and "CRACK" the plastic ripped off. Upon careful examination, it appeared the plastic was simply weak and had broke in half. I tried to open my hood by pulling on the now exposed thin cylinder that was previously attached to the plastic handle, but to no avail.

I was unsure if I would be able to open my hood at this point, as I was unsure of the mechanism's function. However, I decided to try grabbing the cylinder with pliers and pulling, and this did, in fact, open the hood as per usual.

So, this is annoying, and I now keep pliers in my car for opening the hood. This hasn't really impacted my ability to use the vehicle or perform general maintenance, but it is frustrating. Imagine you needed to use pliers every time you opened your trunk to load or unload cargo? Imagine you needed to pull out a special tool to open your kitchen cabinets? Yeah, you have that special tool, and yeah, you can use it to pull your cabinets open... but your cabinets shouldn't need a special tool to open. Neither should my hood.