Safety regulator NHTSA on Wednesday (22 October) expanded the number of vehicles in the United States that may be affected by recalls for potentially defective Takata air bags that could spray shrapnel at occupants from 6.1m announced on Tuesday to 7.8m.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement cited by Reuters the 7.8m vehicles were made by 10 automakers and the tally consists of recalls this year and in 2013. NHTSA reportedly said the new number corrected the vehicle list provided in previous safety bulletins this week, adding some vehicles and excluding others from previous bulletins.
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It is urging owners of certain Toyota, Honda, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors vehicles to replace installed air bags as soon as possible.
According to Reuters, in the expanded bulletin, Honda accounts for almost 5.1m of the vehicles, Toyota 877,000, Nissan almost 695,000, BMW nearly 628,000 and Chrysler over 371,000.
The agency is investigating whether Takata air bag inflators made between 2000 and 2007 were improperly sealed. Bags inflating with too much force could potentially spray metal shrapnel at occupants. The airbags have been linked to four deaths and resulted in several lawsuits.
The problem with the faulty airbags has made nightly national TV news bulletins across the US this week.
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By GlobalDataOn Monday, in a report dramatically headlined ‘It Looked Like a Stabbing, but Takata Air Bag Was the Killer’, the New York Times reported the death of Hien Tran in Florida this month after a car accident, as detectives searched for clues “about the apparent stab wounds in her neck”.
The paper added: “An unlikely breakthrough arrived in the mail a week after she died from her injuries. It was a letter from Honda urging her to get her red Accord fixed, because of faulty air bags that could explode.”
The report said Tran was “at least” the third death associated with the mushrooming recalls of vehicles containing defective air bags made by Takata, the Japanese supplier. More than 14m vehicles from 11 automakers that contain the air bags have been recalled worldwide.
When Tran crashed her car, the air bag, instead of protecting her, appeared to have exploded and sent shrapnel flying into her neck, the Orange County sheriff’s office was quoted as saying.
The paper, which has been tracking the issue in the US for months did not directly link Tran’s death to NHTSA’s first announcement this week but noted: “On Monday, in an unusual warning, [NHTSA] urged the owners of more than 5m vehicles to ‘act immediately’ to get the air bags fixed.”
“We want to make sure that everyone out there — and we’ve got millions of vehicles involved — is getting engaged and is getting their vehicles fixed to protect themselves and their families,” David Friedman, NHTSA’s deputy administrator, told the New York Times.
The paper suggested the urgent request was bound to create confusion among owners. Honda said it did not have enough parts to fix the cars immediately. Toyota said it would in some cases disable the air bags, leaving a note not to ride in the front passenger seat. Even Friedman acknowledged that the agency’s list of vehicles covered by the warning was not complete.
A New York Times investigation in September revealed that Honda and Takata had failed for years to take decisive action before issuing the recalls. Complaints received by regulators about various automakers blamed Takata air bags for at least 139 injuries, including 37 people who reported air bags that exploded, the investigation showed.
Takata did not immediately respond when asked by the paper how long it would take to provide replacement air bags. The company “will continue to fully support the NHTSA investigation and our customers’ recalls,” a Takata spokesman said in an email.
According to the report, Honda has said two people, not including Tran, were killed by rupturing air bags, and more than 30 people injured. Honda said in a statement that it was “too early” to draw any conclusions on Tran’s fatal injuries.
Echoing a problem in the General Motors ignition switch recalls, replacement parts for millions of the vehicles are not available, and will not be for weeks to come, the New York Times said.
“There’s simply not enough parts to repair every recalled single car immediately,” Chris Martin, a Honda spokesman, told the paper.
In a similar campaign as Toyota’s US sales unit, Honda is sending out recall notifications only as parts become available, with priority in areas of high humidity, where the air bags’ propellant was apparently more susceptible to exploding.
Drivers could wait for weeks or longer to receive notices, Martin told the paper. With 2.8m cars alone affected by the warning on Monday, Honda had “a taller hill to climb”, he said, adding that Honda engineers “have no firm idea” when the fixes can be completed. He said loaner cars would be considered case by case, and he stressed that such cars were not part of the offer.
Toyota, which had 844,000 vehicles affected by the warning, since adjusted to 877,000, announced in its campaign it was particularly urging the owners of certain cars in high-humidity areas along the Gulf Coast to make a special effort to get them fixed.
“We’re trying to focus what we have on the areas warranted by Takata’s test result,” spokeswoman Cindy Knight told the New York Times by email.
At the heart of the defect is a faulty propellant that is intended to burn quickly and produce gas to inflate the air bag but instead is too strong and can rupture its container, shooting metal parts into the cabin. Takata recently conducted tests on air bags that had been returned, leading to Monday’s warning, the NYT added.
The paper also mentioned at least four more reported recent suspected ruptures, and, citing case lawyers and legal filings, said Honda had not filed a so-called early warning report with safety regulators, as is required in cases where there is a claim of defect that resulted in an injury or death.
The paper highlighted a case dating from September 2011 when Eddie Rodriguez crashed his Honda Civic in Puerto Rico, deploying air bags that launched “sharp pieces of metal” toward him, causing extensive injuries, according to a lawsuit he filed against Honda the following year.
The New York Times said Honda reached a confidential settlement with Rodriguez last year, but did not appear to have filed a report on the case with regulators.
Honda responded it had started a third-party audit of “potential inaccuracies in its reporting”.
