First Posted: 2/28/2015
FEBRUARY 27, 2015 — You would think a company that makes vehicle air bags — a critical safety feature — would go all-out to assure the world that its product is, you know, safe.
And if something went terribly wrong, causing this safety product to kill? You’d expect the company to do everything possible to protect lives and its own reputation.
Takata Corp. of Japan apparently doesn’t see it that way: the company’s air bags, found in millions of cars in America, sometimes explode when activated. But rather than take full responsibility for its egregious quality lapses, Takata hems, haws and resists demands from U.S. safety regulators.
This is a company that needs to be forced, or shamed, into doing the right thing.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration went after Takata in November, demanding that the company issue a national recall for driver-side air bags after evidence mounted of a horrific problem: In certain circumstances, Takata air bags in older cars can blow apart like a bomb when activated, shooting metal shrapnel into the passenger compartment, and sometimes the driver. Six deaths have been attributed to the phenomenon.
Takata refused to issue the national recall, sticking instead to a narrower regional recall because the company believes its air bags are only susceptible to malfunction in areas of the country with persistent high humidity. The regulators disagreed, pointing to one or two cases of exploding air bags in North Carolina and California, regions with milder climates. Five automakers lost patience with Takata and declared national recalls on their own.
The regulators made a second demand of Takata: they want all of the company’s records related to its air bag manufacturing process, testing protocols and anything else to help solve the riddle of the exploding air bags because the exact cause is still unknown.
Additionally, the NHTSA wanted assurances that Takata employees would explain how to analyze all that data. The demand seemed necessary because a Takata executive who testified before Congress late last year came off as evasive.
Late last week, the NHTSA reported that Takata is playing games instead of cooperating fully with the investigation. Yes, Takata dumped 2.4 million pages of documents on the regulators, but after several meetings with Takata’s lawyers the company still hasn’t provided the explanations regulators need.
Takata is being fined $14,000 a day, the maximum, until it complies. The company insists it is cooperating, pointing to the documents and regular meetings with government engineers, but Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx doesn’t buy it: “We need Takata’s cooperation, and so far they have not demonstrated it.”
This has to end. When the government demanded the recall in November, five deaths were attributed to Takata’s air bags. Now it’s six: Last month, Carlos Solis of suburban Houston got into a low-speed collision in his 2002 Honda Accord; the air bag detonated, sending a metal disc hurtling into Solis’ neck and killing him.
About 17 million vehicles in the U.S. with Takata air bags are now under recall; as of late December about 2 million have been replaced. Takata needs to stop acting like a company paralyzed by fear of lawsuits and the cost of replacement units and fully cooperate. The driving public needs to know what went wrong with Takata’s product, and every possibly defective air bag needs to be replaced.
If the regulators need a bigger stick to drive home the point, they should use it. Potential remedies include going to the Justice Department to force executives to cooperate. Car companies also need to make sure they aren’t holding back. This week Honda’s CEO announced plans to step down, paying the price for the company’s lax response.
Five automakers are conducting national recalls of older model vehicles (mainly from 2000 to 2008) for defective driver-side Takata air bags: BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda and Mazda. Five more are conducting regional recalls: GM, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota.
To see if your vehicle is on the recall list, check the vehicle identification number at http://chicagotribune.com/recall.
