Chances of total recall of Takata air bags rises
DETROIT — As the Takata air bag saga drags on, concerns are growing that tens of millions of U.S. drivers with cars that haven’t been recalled could be at risk of death or injury from the potentially defective devices.
Federal safety regulators last month confirmed that a South Carolina man’s death in December was caused by a driver’s air bag inflator that wasn’t under recall. It was the ninth Takata-related fatality in the U.S.
In a Feb. 10 letter to Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., urged the agency to recall all Takata inflators in U.S. cars. He said the agency’s current approach of issuing recalls piecemeal, “appears to be confusing many consumers” who wonder if their cars have an unsafe air bag that hasn’t been recalled.
Since 2008, 14 automakers have recalled 24 million vehicles to replace the inflators, which can rupture in a crash, shooting metal shards at the driver and passengers.
Experts say there could be as many as 50 million Takata air bag inflators in cars that have yet to be called back for repairs. For drivers of those vehicles, finding out if their car has a Takata inflator can be tricky. They either have to convince a dealer to take apart the car to look, or get the automaker to tell them.
NHTSA spokesman Gordon Trowbridge says the agency doesn’t have the data yet to justify a recall of every Takata inflator. The agency has given Takata until the end of 2018 to solve the problem or issue a blanket recall.
Survivable crash
The death of Joel Knight, 52, underscores how perplexing the search for a solution is. On Dec. 22, Knight’s 2006 Ford Ranger struck a cow on a rural road near his home in Kershaw, S.C. He died after metal fragments from the driver’s inflator impaled his neck. According to a law firm representing Knight’s family, the crash was moderate and otherwise survivable.
NHTSA says Knight’s driver air bag hadn’t been recalled because tests on hundreds of inflators like the one used in his Ranger did not show any failures. The passenger air bag had been recalled.
Knight’s death fits into one prevailing theory about the cause of the ruptures: his truck was an older model, and spent a long period of time in a region with high humidity.
Scott Upham, who runs a Rochester, N.Y., research firm that tracks air bag sales, estimates there are 50 million unrecalled Takata inflators on U.S. roads today.
Until they’re all recalled and fixed “people are going to keep dying,” he says.