The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), following several weeks of trial balloons and direct hints that it was dissatisfied with the speed of recalls and would take action to remedy the problem, confirmed in late-April that it was taking firm action in the long-running Jeep and Takata recalls.
NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said that two agency working groups had been preparing a range of actions the regulators could take to speed the recalls of 1.56 million older Jeeps for gas tank problems and millions of vehicles equipped with Takata airbags that have poor inflators.
Rosekind said "The most important thing was to be able to generate a range of options for us to kind of decide where we want to address these issues in a strategic but timely way." He indicated that the agency is within two weeks of having the results it needs to act.
No one knows the number of vehicles that have been recalled in the continuing Takata exploding airbag inflator recall. Evidence suggests that since 2008, more than seventeen million vehicles have been recalled domestically in this continuing issue. It is likely that as many as 25 million or more vehicles have been affected worldwide. Direct evidence indicates that Honda, the automaker that has felt the impact of this recall the hardest because Takata was until recently its primary airbag supplier, has repaired 815,298 of 5.39 million vehicles recalled.
Rosekind is plainly irritated by the speed of the recall. He indicated his feelings when he said that overall the agency believes the "recall is too slow." His comment comes as the agency is pushing the auto industry to become more proactive on safety issues. Indeed, the agency is planning an auto safety summit in June where the major chiefs of the major automakers will come together to find ways to fix the auto recall system.