Lawsuit points to danger from recycled air bags

A Takata air bag should have been recalled before going from a wrecked car to a salvage yard, eventually ending up in a 2002 Honda Accord and nearly killing a Las Vegas woman, a lawsuit alleges.

The Accord had been fixed up and sold in March 2016 to the family of Karina Dorado, a 19-year-old woman whose trachea was punctured by shrapnel spewed by the faulty air bag. The family claims it was never informed that the air bag was subject to a recall.

How that air bag got into the Accord is detailed in the lawsuit filed this month in Nevada.

It’s unclear just how many faulty Takata inflators are being used in refurbished vehicles, but Honda, once Takata’s biggest customer, says it has bought 75,000 of them from salvage yards in the past two years to keep them off the road.