Takata Air Bag Connected to Eighth Death in the U.S.
December 23 2015 - 12:40PM
Dow Jones News
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said an
exploding Takata Corp. air bag has been connected to an eighth U.S.
death, the ninth globally, from an accident in Pittsburgh in
July.
The administration also named former U.S. Deputy Attorney
General John D. Buretta as the independent monitor ensuring that
Takata follows the agency's consent decree issued on Nov. 3 to stop
using its version of ammonium nitrate as a chemical to deploy air
bags and follow through with testing and other requirements. The
agency also fined Takata $70 million at that time.
Agency spokesman Gordon Trowbridge said that as of Dec. 4, about
27.3% of driver-side air bags and 25.8% of passenger-side air bags
that have been recalled have been replaced.
"The pace is accelerating and doing so rapidly," he said.
The NHTSA said a lawyer for the family of a "minor" killed in an
accident in July approached the agency this month with the belief
that an exploding air bag killed him. He was driving a 2001 Honda
Accord, one of the 19 million vehicles that have been recalled so
far. The Accord had spent several years in the Gulf Coast area.
The agency said it didn't know if the owners had received a
recall notice, but it was among the first vehicles to be recalled
in what has been an ever-widening global concern.
Honda said the vehicle in question had been recalled in 2010 and
the company made several attempts to contact the owner at the time.
The vehicle changed owners after 2012, and Honda said it sent
another notice to the new owner on July 21, one day before the
accident that killed the minor.
High heat and humidity is believed to destabilize the ammonium
nitrate that is used to deploy air bags, making them explode and
sometimes send shrapnel into the cabin.
The availability of replacements parts have slowed the recall
repairs, but the repairs are increasing as alternative
manufacturers are supplying air bags.
NHTSA also will be expanding the recall by a few hundred
thousand vehicles to include additional Mazda6, Subaru Legacy and
Outback and Honda CR-Vs from last decade.
Write to Mike Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 23, 2015 12:25 ET (17:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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