10TH DEATH LINKED TO AIR BAGS
Defective Takata inflaters are blamed in death of the driver of a Ford pickup.
A Ford pickup driver killed last month in South Carolina is the ninth person to die in the U. S. and the 10th worldwide because of defective Takata Corp. air bag inf laters that explode, f iring off shrapnel- like shards, government safety officials said Friday as they announced a new expansion of the largest auto safety recall in history.
Based on the South Carolina accident and tests of a different kind of Takata inf later, an estimated 5 million additional vehicles with potentially defective air bags are being recalled, but that number could change because there may be some overlap with previous recalls, said Gordon Trowbridge, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesman.
The South Carolina crash occurred in late December when the driver of a 2006 Ford Ranger swerved to avoid an obstacle in the road, ran off the side and struck another obstacle, Trowbridge said. He said he was unable to provide further details of the accident.
The safety administration found out about the accident last week from an attorney for the victim’s family, Trowbridge said. NHTSA investigators, police and family representatives examined the vehicle Friday morning and were able to confirm the death was due to an exploding air bag inf later, he said.
A woman in Malaysia was also killed by a rupturing Takata air bag last year, the only known fatality outside the United States. In the U. S., about 23 million Takata air bag inf laters have previously been recalled on 19 million vehicles sold by a dozen manufacturers.
Despite the unprecedented size of the Takata air bag recalls, NHTSA expects the number of vehicles recalled to continue to rise, Trowbridge said. He said there are probably tens of millions of cars with Takata air bags on the road that have not yet been recalled.
“The agency is using all the tools available to clean up this mess as quickly and safely as possible,” he said. “We know that challenge is likely to get significantly bigger.... It is daunting.”
Officials say many of the air- bag deaths and injuries have involved low- speed crashes that otherwise probably would have been survivable.
Takata uses ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion that inf lates the air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate under prolonged exposure to airborne moisture, causing it to burn too fast and blow apart a metal canister designed to contain the explosion.
The vehicles involved in the U. S. crashes have all spent time in humid regions. The pickup in the South Carolina crash had previously spent considerable time in Georgia, Trowbridge said.
About 1 million of the 5 million additional vehicles being recalled are cars and light trucks with air- bag inf laters like the one in the Ford Ranger death, Trowbridge said. In addition to Ford Rangers, the recalled vehicles are likely to include a Mazda pickup truck based on the Ranger, as well some Volkswagen and Audi vehicles, he said. NHTSA is still uncertain of the makes, models and model years of the vehicles because it has not yet heard from all the automakers involved, he said.