U.S. auto safety agency pushes for nationwide airbag recall

As the end of the year approaches, we look back and see that 2014 was not a great year for automotive safety. While there are improvements taking place in both the body of cars and the technology inside them, this year led to some major recalls and issues.

One of these is the Takata airbags. Used by several manufacturers, these airbags have been reported to be the cause of many injuries and possible death. The scope of this investigation is now expanding in the United States as groups are pressuring the government and the company to expand its recall:

U.S. auto safety regulators have taken the first step in a legal process to compel a nationwide recall of millions of vehicles with potentially defective airbags. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent a letter late last month to the Washington, D.C., office of Japanese airbag manufacturer Takata Corp., giving the company until tomorrow to officially admit a defect in its airbags and expand a current recall that affects only high-humidity regions.

Takata-manufactured airbags have been blamed for at least five deaths and multiple injuries worldwide. Those injuries and deaths are attributed to defective inflator and propellant devices, which can cause the airbag to deploy with too much force, shooting metal fragments into vehicle occupants.

According to a report by Car and Driver, only six makes of automobiles were involved when Takata announced the airbag problems in April 2013 (see a list of affected vehicles at the end of the story). But a Toyota recall in June of this year “along with new admissions from Takata that it had little clue as to which cars used its defective inflators, or even what the root cause was,” prompted other automakers to issue similar recalls.

Because Takata maintained prolonged exposure to moisture might cause the airbag propellants to burn too quickly, the NHTSA took steps in July to force auto manufacturers to expand their self-initiated recalls to high-humidity regions, including the Gulf Coast states, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and some U.S. territories. But in mid-November the NHTSA began pressing for a nationwide recall after an airbag failure in a 2007 Ford Mustang in North Carolina—a state not part of the original “high-humidity” regions.

About 8 million vehicles from 10 manufacturers have been recalled so far in the United States, and 14 million worldwide. But the problem of defective airbags began to appear much earlier than last year. The New York Times reported in September that both Takata and Honda allegedly have known about the faulty inflators since 2004 but either delayed or failed to notify the NHTSA.  WORLD | U.S. auto safety agency pushes for nationwide airbag recall | Michael Cochrane | Dec. 1, 2014

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