Death spurs wider recall
Federal safety regulators on Friday said that a man had died in late December when an air bag made by Takata exploded in the vehicle he was driving.
It was the 10th death linked to what has become one of the country’s biggest consumer safety problems.
In announcing the death, regulators also significantly expanded the recall of cars containing Takata air bags, adding 5 million to the 19 million already under recall and extending it to two manufacturers, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, that had not previously been affected.
The twin announcements are the latest evidence that, more than a decade after the first known rupture of a Takata air bag,
automakers and regulators are still struggling to understand the scope of the problem.
Although the root cause of the defect is still unknown, regulators have focused on the air bags’ propellant, which contains ammonium nitrate, a com- pound that breaks down over time or when it is exposed to moisture. When that happens, the ammonium nitrate can combust violently, causing the propellant’s metal casing, called an inflater, to overpressurize and rupture.
Millions of cars remain unfixed, yet are still on the road. Overall, 27.3 percent of recalled driver’s-side air bags have been replaced and 25.8 percent of passenger-side bags, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those numbers are higher in regions with high humidity, which are seen as being a higher risk.
The latest death occurred when the air bag in a 2006 Ford Ranger pickup driven by a Georgia man ruptured violently in South Carolina, Gordon Trowbridge, a spokesman for NHTSA, said.
It is the first to occur in a vehicle made by an automaker other than Honda Motor, underscoring the defect’s growing reach, and is the ninth fatality in the United States.
A Takata spokesman, Jamie Tully, said the company was “cooperating fully with regulators and our automotive customers and continue to support all actions that advance vehicle safety.”
Still, Friday’s announcements left Rosemary Shahan, the founder of Con- sumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, concerned over what is still to come.
“It looks pretty inevitable that all of these air bags with ammonium nitrate may be recalled,” Shahan said. “You don’t want to wait until there is a death and then figure it out. That’s what we are all trying to prevent.”