New NHTSA Investigation Puts Spotlight On Airbag Problems
With Toyota not only expanding a recall due to defective airbags but also bringing back some vehicles it had previously repaired, U.S. safety regulators have launched an investigation into the airbags produced by Japanese supplier Takata – a move that could impact not only Toyota but a number of other major manufacturers.
Credited with saving thousands of lives, airbags have also been implicated in a number of recent recalls and even blamed for causing some deaths and injuries. And industry observers caution that with the number of airbags found in the typical vehicle rising, the problem could become worse in the years ahead.
Many, but not all, of the most recent problems have centered around the so-called supplementary inflatable restraints produced by Takata. The new investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration focuses on approximately 1.1 million vehicles sold by Toyota, Nissan, Chrysler, Honda, and Mazda. Defective inflators could cause fires or even send debris shooting into the passenger compartment like shrapnel.
At least six reports have been recorded by NHTSA involving inflator problems in vehicles sold during the 2002 to 2006 model-years.
Several of the makers targeted by the new investigation have indicated plans to work with government investigators on resolving the problem. The inflators may have been manufactured improperly at a plant in Washington state. It is also possible parts for the inflators were exposed to moisture before final assembly at another plant in Mexico.
Last year, Takata airbags were the source of recalls involving 3.7 million vehicles worldwide, a move involving six different automakers. But that now appears to have only partially addressed the problem.
The airbag problems of recent years have loosely fallen into three categories:
- Airbag systems that deploy when they’re not needed, whether due to faulty sensor or short-circuiting control systems, or because of incorrectly programmed software
- Airbags that fail to deploy for similar reasons
- Airbags that may not be properly installed and can inflate too aggressively or even send shards of plastic or metal flying into the passenger compartment like shrapnel from a bomb
A separate problem came to light when, in October 2012, NHTSA announced that millions of vehicles may have been fitted with counterfeit – and potentially faulty – airbags after crashes that caused their original airbags to deploy.