Faulty Takata Air Bags Recalled Nationwide By The US Regulators

Toyota were forced by the US regulators to call back their cars because they had dangerous Takata air bags in them.

Takata air bags were a safety hazard and the US regulators made the Takata Corporation to call back their faulty air bags. Millions of cars had these air bags in them and that is because the company used a piecemeal approach into fixing the deadly flaws.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wrote a letter to Takata and they told them to recall their cars by 2nd December because  they had identified a defect in the driver’s air bag inflators.

The NHTSA also told them that if they failed to recall their cars, they will have to pay a civil fine of $7000 per violation. Takata Corporation was trying to find a way so that they wouldn’t have to recall their cars.

They pushed back the calls by the NHTSA so that they could expand regional repair campaign which was to focus on 8 million cars in the start. Takata also suggested that if they were to recall all of the cars, it would slow down the repairing work on the cars. So they proposed that the areas where air bag malfunction is low shouldn’t be called back at this time.

Frank Boris who is the head of the NHTSA’s office of defect investigation said that Takata has provided no justification for limiting the geographic scope to the high absolute humidity regions. The company spokesman, Toyohiro Hishikawa said that the company is still deciding on what they have to do after they received the letter by the NHTSA.

The air bag making company’s shares fell in the Tokyo stock market. The shares fell by 4.8 percent and now a share costs 1292 yen. NHTSA has observed that if the air bags are exposed to humidity for a long time, they will eventually malfunction.

This is why they have recalled the Takata air bags. NHTSA said that these air bags are dangerous because if the malfunction, they will break with a lot of force that could break apart metal pieces and strike the passengers. These air bags have already taken passenger lives.

Four deaths were reported by Honda Motor Co. in the US. So now Toyota has recalled 57000 of their vehicles. These vehicles have a higher possibility of air bag malfunctioning. The cars that are recalled include are Vitz, Yaris and RAV4 models and these were all made between 2002 and 2004.

Honda is Takata’s biggest customer and they might be the one that are the most affected by the recalls. Chrysler has also been recalled and the NHTSA told them to get their cars back by 1st December.

Takata’s quality assurance man Hiroshi Shimizu must be disappointed by the recalls and he also recently said that the company is making 300000 kits per month. The company is looking to make 450000 kits per month in the near future.

Source: Business Week, Reuters