Despite warnings, dangerous air bags not repaired

DETROIT — Owners of more than 300,000 Hondas have yet to get their air bags repaired, despite warnings from the automaker and regulators that the inflators have an extremely high chance of rupturing and causing injury or even death.

Last week authorities said one of those air bags, equipped with an inflator made by Takata Corp., ruptured and killed a California woman, adding urgency to the search for the noncompliant vehicles.

About 69 million Takata inflators have been recalled due to possible rupture. In June, government regulators said testing showed that inflators in 313,000 older Hondas and Acuras had as high as a 50 percent chance of rupturing in a crash. The regulators told owners of the cars to stop driving them and get them repaired. But four months later, only 13,000 of the cars have been repaired.

Takata uses ammonium nitrate to create an explosion to inflate air bags. But the chemical can deteriorate when exposed to heat and humidity and blow apart a metal canister, spewing shrapnel. The inflators have killed as many as 16 people worldwide and injured more than 100. The death of the California woman, Delia Robles, was the 11th tied to Takata inflators in the U.S.

Honda said it has mailed letters, placed Facebook ads, made telephone calls and, in some instances, has visited owners. But the results point out that major holes remain in the U.S. safety recall system because owners can be hard to find, particularly when it comes to used cars that have changed hands multiple times. And some owners refuse to get repairs done no matter how many times they are notified.

Safety advocates have called for laws banning the sale of any vehicle until recall repairs are made, or a national requirement that recalls be done before license plates can be renewed. But so far, there are few such requirements.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said Honda should do more. “No responsible automaker should be so slow in repairing defective vehicles where there’s up to a 50 percent chance a driver could be killed or seriously injured if an air bag deploys,” he said in a statement last week.

But Honda said it’s doing all it can. “It’s not for lack of unprecedented effort to try to reach these owners,” company spokesman Chris Martin said. Honda will pick up cars and drop off a loaner, says Martin, who adds that Honda has parts ready to repair all the dangerous cars.

Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Autotrader. com, said it’s hard for automakers to find owners of low-cost cars that are 10 or 15 years old, because many owners are young and move frequently or are immigrants who may have language barriers. Many cars have had four or more owners, making them harder to find.

But because these cars are so dangerous, Brauer said it’s time to either go to everyone’s home or take all 300,000 off the road.

NHTSA doesn’t have legal authority to order those steps, spokesman Bryan Thomas said. The agency knows that traditional ways of contacting owners haven’t been successful, and it’s working with Honda on new methods, he said without offering specifics.