Car manufacturers in the US have jointly issued a recall for five million more vehicles in the US after the death of a driver driving the Ford Ranger in US was suspected due to faulty airbags. Takata, the world’s largest airbag supplier, has not been able to prove the reliability of the ammonium nitrate propellant for the inflators. Over 24 million cars have been recalled till date, one of the biggest recalls ever in the history of automotive sales.
Honda was the first OEM to recall millions of cars globally after the death of a woman in Malaysia in 2014. It included the 2.23 lakh Honda cars recalled in India for the airbag issue. Takata’s inflators may explode with excessive force resulting in shock along with a spray of metal shrapnel that may cause injuries.
The new manufacturers after Honda, Ford and Toyota on the recall list are Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and SAAB. Dubbed as the biggest crisis in automotive safety, NHTSA (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) said it is very difficult to find out the exact number of cars affected due to this issue. The NHTSA also hinted that the number of vehicles recalled may go up by millions.
Takata has already agreed to pay up a 70 million dollar fine to NHTSA which may go up further as the Japanese supplier is undergoing a criminal investigation in the United States.
