While Takata has agreed to the largest consumer product recall ever of 34 million cars with their defective and potentially explosive airbags, millions of cars with Takata airbags have already had theirs replaced under previous recalls. Except hundreds of thousands of those airbags will now have to be replaced a second time. Awesome!
Reuters broke the news today that at least 400,000 of the 4 million airbags already replaced under recall will have to be swapped out again for still being defective.
An official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Reuters on Wednesday that it was up to Takata Corp and the carmakers to “demonstrate to us that the remedy parts are safe for the life of the vehicle.” A priority now is to determine which of the replacement parts “are suspect and need to be replaced” again, the NHTSA official said.
An estimated 400,000 of the replacement driver-side inflators use a potentially defective propellant wafer that is shaped like a batwing. “Those will have to be replaced again,” the Takata source said. That estimate was confirmed by the NHTSA source.
Emphasis mine.
At least six people are dead and 100 injured from the airbags, which could rupture and spray fragments of shrapnel into the cabin of the vehicle.
A list of vehicles that need to be re-recalled was not immediately available.
The recall’s going great, Takata! Keep up the good work!
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