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posted by martyb on Sunday January 12 2020, @06:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-it-on-the-chin-again dept.

This new round of recalls, announced Wednesday, affects US-market vehicles from BMW, Fiat Chrysler, Honda and Subaru, among others. The problem with these already-repaired vehicles is that during the early stages of the recall, Takata replaced dangerous old inflators with new ones of the exact same design and chemistry.

FCA representatives are stating that, while a total of around 50,000 vehicles were affected since the first rounds of this particular recall went out in 2015, there are no new VIN numbers being added to the list. Meanwhile, Honda's representatives say the company's been working on this particular recall since June of 2019, six months before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decision.

According to a report Wednesday by Automotive News, Takata believed that since the problem with the inflators was exacerbated by time, temperature and humidity, replacing the inflators with new ones was the best way forward. It wasn't.

Eventually, Takata reformulated the inflator's explosive propellant, adding a drying compound that helps to preserve the unit for much longer. That's what's now being installed in many cars, even though Takata went out of business and was purchased by a Chinese company in 2018. Some companies have opted to go a different way entirely, sourcing airbag inflators from different companies that had nothing to do with Takata.

According to the NHTSA, more than 38 million vehicles have been repaired in the seven years since the recalls started. It also estimates that there were nearly 13 million still-defective parts installed in vehicles as of November 2019.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:46PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:46PM (#942494)

    I had the same thoughts about early design airbags, which were "one size fits all" -- powerful enough to stop an adult...and too powerful for small/light people/children. Smaller people also typically sit closer to the steering wheel, so get a bigger hit from the airbag. I kept my 1992 car (no airbag, shoulder belt attached to door) until I could replace it with a car that had second generation airbags. A good explanation here for anyone interested, https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/164/2/161/74448 [oup.com]

    Front air bags reduce injury and death for most drivers and right front seat passengers in vehicle crashes (1). First-generation air bags were designed to protect an unbelted adult male at the 50th percentile of body height and weight in a severe frontal crash (2). To meet this requirement, first-generation air bags were designed to deploy within 0.05 seconds at 140–200 miles per hour (224–320 km/hour) (3). These first-generation air bags have been lethal for children and small adults in some crashes (4, 5).

    Second-generation air bags were developed to mitigate this problem; most passenger vehicles of model year 1998 and virtually all passenger vehicles of later model years have second-generation air bags (5, 6). Second-generation air bags include advanced air bags and depowered air bags. Advanced air bags may have any of several features, including different deployment thresholds or forces depending on crash severity or on the occupant's weight, position, or use of restraints (2, 7–9). A few manufacturers introduced advanced air bags in model year 2000 vehicles. Depowered air bags inflate 20–35 percent less aggressively than first-generation air bags and were permitted in passenger vehicles by model year 1998 (6). Concern has been expressed that large unrestrained occupants propelled at high force might overwhelm such air bags (6, 10, 11). Thus, depowered air bags may represent a tradeoff between decreasing the risk of death for some occupants and increasing the risk for others, such as unrestrained adults.

    Annnnd, once again, it seems to be all about the children(grin), fat bastards should keep their first generation airbag cars.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 12 2020, @02:24PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday January 12 2020, @02:24PM (#942499)

    designed to protect an unbelted adult male

    Because in 1990 serious injury and deaths in auto accidents were still mainly attributed to unbelted vehicle occupants.

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    • (Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Monday January 13 2020, @09:21AM (1 child)

      by PocketSizeSUn (5340) on Monday January 13 2020, @09:21AM (#942677)

      And the other humorous bit is that an unbelted occupant had a non-zero tendency to be diverted from going out the windshield (survivable) to going out the roof of the vehicle (deadly).
      Airbags alone probably come close to being zero benefit with the reduction in injury almost entirely due to the monumental shift in seatbelt use and little to do with airbags themselves.
      It's probably not as bad as anti-lock brakes, which are a total negative outcome in terms if accident reduction.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 13 2020, @02:11PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday January 13 2020, @02:11PM (#942728)

        The psychology campaign with mandatory child seats was probably the most effective thing done at the time.

        I haven't seen any anti-lock brake negative outcome statistics, but I might liken that to the increased risk of injury when wearing rubber sneakers on wet floors. People who wear relatively slick leather bottom shoes tend to walk more carefully all the time, never depending on "sneaker traction" because it's never there. On the other hand sneakers provide much better traction until they don't, and people actually tend to fall more often and with greater injuries when their sneakers fail to provide them traction on a slick floor.

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  • (Score: 2) by NickM on Sunday January 12 2020, @09:22PM

    by NickM (2867) on Sunday January 12 2020, @09:22PM (#942554) Journal
    Technology has improved since 2006... My current car (a 2019) and the one before that (a 2011) had sensors that inferred the mass on the passenger seat and enabled the passenger airbags accordingly. As I don't drive a luxury car I think that this feature is pretty standard, nowadays.
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