Submitted by ahm713 t3_y35ori in todayilearned
I mean, it's not terrible as advice goes. Just not very helpful when there's a time bomb in your steering wheel.
Can't you disable the airbag?
Maybe but the issue was that moisture got inside the inflator, making it unstable and explode when activated.
That's what the article says it was. Also supposedly exploded with an unaccounted-for amount of force, shredding the metal canister and flinging the shreds out at the person's face.
Yes, very easily
I’m sure you are still way safer with it on and the possibility of it cutting your throat then having nothing but steering wheel to cushion your head. If the fatalities were that common it would have happened much sooner than 8 years after the 2001 Accord came out. It’s obviously still dangerous to possibly have that issue, but considering how many cars they produced it only effected a small percent of them.
Edit: Downvote if you want, but I have no clue why. Please enlighten me why my opinion is wrong. It killed 24 people over 10 plus years with at least 19.4M airbags effected, that number is minuscule. I’m not saying that the faulty airbags are good enough, I’m just saying you are safer with this airbag that is faulty than disconnecting it as the person above me said.
It took 8 years because the problem with it was the degradation of the parts. Not that they were faulty from the start. And there were much more injuries, just because they didn’t all die doesn’t mean the airbag wasn’t extremely dangerous. Not all crashes are fatal but that doesn’t mean they were better off with a faulty safety feature. The fact that anyone died means they’re not better off with a faulty airbag that might slash your major arteries or maybe “just” further injure you.
Here is a more recent article than the 19.4M cited before, it’s from September 2021.
“Through various announcements, the recall has grown to include 67 million airbags from more than 42 million vehicles in the U.S.” “To date, there have been 19 deaths and more than 400 injuries because this problem in the U.S. Worldwide, NHTSA reports that there have been at least 27 deaths.”
Putting all of the casualties together the odds of being injured are 0.00064%, that number is insanely small. If there is that chance the airbag will randomly kill you but a 30% increased chance of it saving your life or prevent major injury in a serious accident than you are better off with it than without.
> The fact that anyone died means they’re not better off with a faulty airbag that might slash your major arteries or maybe “just” further injure you.
That’s not how statistics work, when dealing with 64M airbags did they save more people than they harmed, based on all the data on air bags they saved more people. Different article I read this morning said 2,750 peoples lives were saved in the US by airbags in 2016 alone, that’s a hundred times more people saved in a year than faulty airbags killed in the 20ish years of the issue. I’m not saying the company shouldn’t recall them, I’m just saying have a faulty airbag is better than no airbag and the numbers back that up.
Are you an antivaxxer? There is an incredibly small chance the Covid vaccine can kill you, like any vaccine, but the odds are so insanely low that it’s worth the risks. There will always be at least one person who will die from it that wouldn’t have anyway and that’s just the odds that we live with when we are talking about billions of people. We are absolutely safer with the vaccine and losing a few people than we are with horrible viruses running around unchecked.
My first car had no airbag, from the factory. I'd have looked into disabling it until they had a fix
I mean- if you are wearing a seatbelt I would rather just deal with the wheel. Airbags are relatively new when it comes to driving. I think you just perceive no airbag as a much bigger threat because you are young.
Early windshields were made of glass so in accidents they cut people to shreds, just because safety glasses is newer doesn’t make it less safe. We are is much safer in cars than we ever were before, airbags save lives. Just like seatbelts, there’s always a person who says well not wearing one saved my life, but they are the exception not the rule.
“Front airbags reduce driver fatalities in frontal crashes by 29 percent and fatalities of front-seat passengers age 13 and older by 32 percent”
https://www.iihs.org/topics/airbags
That means you are significantly safer with airbags. The deaths from this recall are tragic, but they are a very small number one, the vast majority of people with those cars were safer with faulty airbags than without.
It’s also not just fatalities that matter, it reduces the risk of serious injury too. I’d rather hit an airbag and break an arm than hit the steering wheel or glovebox and break 9 different bones and have my face smashed in, even if I don’t die in either situation.
Yup, Reddit never ceases to amaze me, show them actual evidence and they are just like nah. The faulty airbags killed 1 in a million people, there is no way that airbags didn’t save more than 1 person per million. Oh where I came up with that 19.4M number was from an old article, it has grown to 67M with 27 confirmed fatalities and 400 injuries. There is absolutely no way people are safer with a disconnected airbag than one of the ones being recalled.
It's one of the largest recalls ever, and they didn't even have a fix at first. The failure is due to degradation so at the start of the recall the procedure was to replace it with another faulty part, so that at least people wouldn't die while they tried to figure out how to fix it right.
Edit: largest automotive recall ever
This was crazy. For whatever reason only our passenger side airbag was impacted, so I rode in the back while my husband drove for months while we waited to get the airbag replaced on our '07 Impreza.
For the early stages of the recall they replaced the dodgy airbags with a newer one with the same flaw, it takes several years for the problem to build up to dangerous levels, as they didn't have safer replacements.
They needed to buy some time for other airbag suppliers to produce enough to replace one of the biggest manufacturers of airbags.
I was surprised they recalled my 1999 Acura CL over this in 2020. I plan on keeping it until they need to replace the airbag again just so I can go into the dealer and complain that they just don’t make cars like they used to.
When it comes to human safety from the manufacturer, they are responsible forever, as long as the consumer has not altered them. I love your idea about your 99 Acura, "they just don't make cars like they used to." LoL 🤣
The flaws also weren't consistent, so most places did a tiered replacement starting with the riskiest ones.
Dealers for a while had waivers that said if you have a passenger in the car, you promise to put them in the back seat
The fuck?
Ok so this is a weird one. Basically as someone else said in another thread, the company that made the airbag inflators made a lot of them for a lot of automakers for a long time.
Prior to other companies being able to produce the inflators for permanent replacement, you had a handful of options for your car until autoliv and other companies got the necessary inflators
-Dont drive the car, leaving it either at home or on a dealer's lot
-drive the car on your own at your own risk(you could still file a suit if injured, the waiver merely acknowledged the risks were explained to you)
-be put in a rental for an unknown period of time(Honda exhausted enterprise's rental inventory at one point)
-put a new version of the defective airbag to reset the failure timer(heat, time and humidity being the most responsible for airbag failure)
-some folks went as far to disconnect the inflator entirely
It resulted in weird situations where honda dealers had vehicle owners swear with sugar on top that if they drove a car because the other options were exhausted or they couldn't be without their car, and they had passengers, they'd endeavor to put the passenger in the back seat which very likely ensured maybe a little more protection
I worked in the field for Honda on this kind of stuff, it was a very interesting few years
Edit: Love your username, that is a fantastic book
That makes a lot more sense! Thanks for the info! And yeah, it’s a truly eye opening book.
My Honda dealer had a backlog of replacements too and they gave me a nice replacement vehicle while I was waiting for the part to come in.
Thats when I go to my local car guy and tell him to take this shit out. Id rather have no airbag than a grenade.
I worked at a honda dealership during this time and i replaced crazy amounts of these. I would have days and days of just these replacements to the point it felt like an assembly line work. Something alot of people dont realize is that we had to send all the old ones back and they all had special paperwork because your basically messing with a mini claymore mine and they had to be disposed of properly. The logistics was insane. Honda basically started an airbag factory just to handle thier load.
I had a car that had a defect that would make it catch fire. The third time they recalled it they just said to not park in or under anything until they figure something out.
My parents had the Explorer with the Firestone recall. I think that killed like 800 people and same thing, Ford's advice.
Maintain air pressure (fair enough).
Don't drive when it is hot.
Like how someone doesn't do jail time for these is amazing.
Mine was a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix. A whole bunch of other cars had the same engine, my sister had an 03 Bonneville. Didn't get recalled the first time until like 2010 at least, might've been later. It was a pretty regular occurrence that people's car's were spontaneously combusting, too. Mine had caught fire a few rimes, I thought it overheated at the time. There was also parts melted that no one could figure out.
Apparently there was something wrong with where you fill the oil. If you came to a hard stop or were even just going downhill, oil would leak onto the exhaust manifold and catch fire. My sister checked her oil while getting gas and discovered hers on fire. She frantically blew it out.
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I don't think I was ever able to get mine fixed. Eventually traded the car in so it's someone else's problem now
I really hope you told them about it, otherwise that would be kinda fucked up.
These things are easily looked up via the cars VIN. It was sold to a big car dealer so they can deal with the "lack of available parts" to fix it.
Probably illegal. I don't think you can legally sell a car with a recall without fixing it. Or at least dealers
> It’s also humid down in Florida where, in September 2014, Hien Tran was driving home from her family’s nail salon in Orlando.
>
>Like Ms Parham, she had a relatively minor crash in a Honda Accord. But when paramedics arrived they couldn’t understand the scene before them. She had suffered a slash through her jugular vein.
>
>“Deep cuts on the right side of her neck were not consistent with crash injuries,” a report from the paramedics stated.
>
>“There were no windows broken ... that would cause sharp glass to penetrate a human’s body. Therefore, the force of the crash was not significant enough to cause great bodily harm to any occupant in both vehicles.”
>
>It looked like Ms Tran had been stabbed, reported the New York Times. Initially, police looked into why someone might murder the Vietnamese immigrant, who never regained consciousness and later died.
>
>It was only when, a week later, a letter from Honda came through the post asking Ms Tran to get her car’s airbags fixed that police realised that was the cause.
It is truly horrifying that millions of cars worldwide are still affected and that there are probably many unrecognised deaths that are probably attributed to those airbags.
Good to point out Honda was not the only manufacturer that used these faulty air bags, not by a long shot.
Is there any sort of list or anything to see what manufacturers and models were affected?
If you're in the US, you can look up your car by VIN or Year/Make/Model: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
Yeah it should be readily available online. Also you can call a dealership with your VIN and they'll tell you if your TSB was ever completed or not.
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Got mine done yesterday. Bit of a relief.
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Reminds me… I need to take mine in…
There wasn't a recall?!
There was a recall. That's the letter in the mail.
Pulling the number out of my ass, but even when there's a recall I think it would be a miracle if 75% of the vehicles affected actually get the issue fixed. That's how there are still millions of vehicles in the road with either this or a host of other issues.
Whenever this cones up I think of Anton yelchin:(
That one still gets me. I can't watch any of his movies without tearing up. He had so much potential. Fuck Chrysler, seriously.
Oh shit was that a vehicle defect/fault that caused the accident? I just remember hearing about it being a freak accident with his car, didn't remember hearing anything about faulty equipment/a recall.
I believe it was a poor design decision by the manufacturer on how the shifter works on that vehicle.
You should not have to look at anything to know what gear you're in.
Yep, I was going to say this but couldn't reply earlier. It's not a defect, but definitely a massive design flaw. Both my maternal and paternal grandfather worked for GMC and they strongly resisted any changes to design that gave way to aesthetics over function.
This is why gated shifters are the best
There were some stories floating around (anecdotal, so take with a grain of salt) of how the dealerships didn't want to actually do the work to replace the airbags because the payout from OEMs was break-even. So instead a lot of them took in the vehicle, and then let it sit for a few hours before returning it "fixed". If called on it, they could plead ignorance and actually do the procedure then, but almost nobody could actually call them on it because how do you even check?
This may have been true in the 90s early 2000s, but the manufacturer I work for requires pictures and verification of number swaps. And if the tech claims he did a job that he didn't do and for whatever reason another tech has to go in behind the first guy and finds the recall wasn't completed as stated. The first tech can have his number suspended and he could lose his job as well as the dealership could lose franchising rights. I only know this because one of our techs had alot of work closed under his number that later came back as incomplete. So now he is on a year long probation and has to have all warranty work signed off on by the shop foreman and service manager. I worked with a couple of old Honda techs who claim that when this recall was in its prime they were going to junk yards to replace any airbags in any totalled vehicles as well so there was no risk of problems later on. Plus the techs got paid pretty well for the work.
Happy Cake Day!
The manufacturer should have warned them: you do this, and anyone dies, it’s felony murder. Carrie’s the death penalty in a lot of states.
(I’m not 100% you could make it stick — most jurisdictions actually list the felonies that are “inherently dangerous” — but these are mechanics not lawyers.)
So scary.
They force you to in Australia. A friend of mine has an older Volvo (2004 or so), and he hasn't gotten around to having it done. He's been threatened with registration cancellation if he doesn't get it done.
I had a Mazda 6 done three damn times (and no one explained to me why). The third time I cracked the shits and insisted that they come and collect the car, and supply me with a loaner. They wouldn't collect it, but I did get a loaner for two days.
That’s terrifying and so sad. I can’t imagine how scared she was bleeding out in her own car at only 18 years old, at the hands of one of the only things that was supposed to save her life in the case of an accident
Not much consolation, but she wasn't scared for long.
I can't help but wonder if she made an attempt to stop the bleeding or just didn't understand how severe her wound was.
My understanding is that with arterial wounds to the neck, you lose consciousness in seconds. I may be wrong.
Not to mention that someone would obviously be dazed after a suddenly airbag explosion, it was likely a moment of surprise and then loss of consciousness before what had happened could even get processed
Nobody seems to ever mention how much airbags sting. My eyes were bloodshot from the powder the entire next day.
sudden drop of blood pressure, depends on how straight she was sitting most likely beeing shocked over the inflation she was prob perked up and passed out immediatly, no pain, most likely
Used to work the door to door component of Honda's recall outreach prior to the pandemic.
I get that given the number of airbag deaths is low compared to total number of affected components that it seems like the risks are low. Don't care.
Get it done, call your Honda dealer, it's free and the repair once the car rolls into the shop is under 15 minutes for the steering wheel and a little bit longer for the passenger component.
It's like having a shotgun or claymore pointed at your face, and even mundane tiny bumps can trigger the airbag sensor the old your car gets.
One dealer I worked with said a girl literally got out of her car at the dealer(key in ignition, I believe still running) and slammed the door closed in prep to get something out of her back seat and the airbag deployed with shrapnel. Luckily it was just a new seat for her car that was needed
Edit: clarity
Are all air bag replacement free? I'm driving a 1993 Honda Accord LX. Been in two minor accidents and air bags never went off, but someone else owned this car before me.
To answer your question, it is highly unlikely your car is affected by this specific recall.
Most Honda models that were affected were between the years 2001-2016ish? Maybe even into 2018. It was also not uniform across models. '01 accords had mostly the driver side affected but passenger side would be fine and the civics would usually have both affected.
Without looking at your car, my guess is your airbags probably failed to deploy from vehicle and component age. Electrical components and sensors get funky over time. For all I know your inflator in your car may be disconnected or you may not have an inflator at all. I'm looking through some Google searches and it says some accord sedan body types dont have passenger airbags
Damn I drive a 2008 Civic I'm gonna have to check on this. This is the first time I've even heard of any of this shit, kind of agitating TBH.
I did get into an accident in a 2007 Civic where the airbags deployed, luckily no one's fucking neck was sliced open. Didn't think too much of it since, but what the fuck.
https://www.recalls.gov/nhtsa.html
Get your VIN of your car and check that. I didn't see civics from your year when I was doing field work but it does not mean it wasn't affected
Gotcha, thank you! Yeah mine does not have a passenger one.
Not just Honda, I have an ‘05 Mercedes with one in the steering wheel.
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I believe so, at least my dash has a "SRS" light that comes on briefly when I start the car. Or would that not be an indicator?
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Thank you!
My 2006 Honda Civic Si had this recall. Honda would literally send me letters once a month begging me to take it in...letters in Spanish, bribes of gift cards...it was quite impressive. They even followed me through like four changes of address.
Fuckin A I drive a 2008 Civic and this is the first I've heard of any of this shit. Although I don't recall ever receiving a letter from Honda so hopefully that's a good thing. Probably gonna look my car up just to be sure though.
I did get into an accident in a 2007 Civic and the airbags deployed, luckily no one's fucking neck was sliced open. Didn't think too much of it then, but fuck.
Take it to a Honda dealership and let them know you have an affected vehicle.
Because even if someone is a moron and refuses to bring their car back the media storm still makes Honda look bad.
This isn't just honda though right? I thought it was all kinds
Basically everyone was affected, but it was to what degree. Honda was the most affected. At one point, the team I was on just regionally within our state started out looking for about 2,000 alphas(highest risk), then it ballooned to about 10,000 phase two vehicles a little less than a year later. We never got close to all affected Hondas by the time the pandemic hit.
The scale of resources required to reach everyone was expensive for Honda and it was stunning to encounter people who really did not care or were utterly hostile to you visiting. It would not surprise me if Honda has spent 4-5 billion dollars to this point
The dealership I live by won't service my Acura because they don't have the parts and the closest one that does is an hour away in a big, traffic filled city. Hate driving a time bomb.
This was a huge contention point between Honda and Acura. Despite many Hondas and Acuras sharing models and parts, the dealers hate the paperwork to do crossovers. There's also a weird distance minimum that has to be covered for a Honda dealer to be "allowed" to handle the Acura repair.
If you have any mail or door material with regard to your vehicle that has a contact number to the national office, I'd suggest getting in touch with them. Dealers are sensitive pains in the ass to work with sometimes
Edit: have your VIN on hand. Also, depending on if you need your vehicle there may be an option for either a rental or a tow-fix-return tow.
See this is where head office is meant to call up the brand managers and put the fear of god into them for playing stupid games on this.
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I had one of these. When I got the recall notice, the dealership tried to schedule. I made a scene and they replaced it on the spot.
The drive to the dealership must be some scary shit.
The car had 195000 miles on it. Scary.
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You might need to have it done again. My dealership replaced the faulty one with another faulty one, albeit newer. So I had to get it replaced again a year or two ago, with ANOTHER faulty one, albeit newer.
I now drive an American-made car with proper safety systems (Tesla 3). Sold that wagon when the engine and transmission failed in the same week, spent all my savings and nearly cost me my job.
Takata teamed up with Rocket Research Co to develop the inflators. It was called the TAB program internally. RRC developed a proprietary propellant for them. Takata ended up buying out RRC’s interest in the joint venture, except for the propellant and the filters. As I recall, RRC was boning them for the propellant, so Takata went shopping for something cheaper.
Bloomberg has a story with the details.
Most of the remaining TAB people from RRC now work for General Dynamics, after a few mergers and spin-offs. One of the project engineers opened a shop down the road specializing in airbag replacement.
That is so sad. It should have been made a priority to have those serviced immediately.
There were over 33.8 million affected cars, you can't just snap your fingers and fix that.
If you're in the US, you can check for recalls on your car here:
My 07 sierra had them. Took 9 mths from the letter to replacement
Worked at an auto auction yard a few years back and we had two rows constantly filled with Takata airbag replacement cars. They had to have the airbag guy come out each week and replace them all before they could be resold. Swap them to a different row after the fix and replace with more cars. By the way if anyone purchases from these places just know that boats and rvs are a steal as they are usually totalled out by insurance without any damage to them
I was one of the guys who was going into junkyards to confirm the status of those inflators, eventually the salvage yards jumped on to programs Honda worked with that would buy the inflators out of the yard and ensure their destruction, or get back to Honda for testing purposes to monitor failure rates
The carotid is a scary part of your body. It's not hard to nick at all, and you're dead before you can finish giving your location to 911.
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Jesus, that's some final destination shit
Killed by something that was designed to save you is an awful way to go.
The "Plainly Difficult" video on Takata is really interesting.
Takata deserved to go out of business for this shit.
They did. They went bankrupt and “Takata” no longer exist. However, in bankruptcy they were acquired by Key Safety Systems, a Chinese company, which then changed its name to Joyson.
Joyson still makes seatbelts and airbags, however they no longer use the Takata propellant that resulted in the recall.
My girlfriend was working for them when Joyson took over. They laid pretty much everyone off, then called them 3 weeks later to offer them their old jobs for 1/2 the money.
Before they went bankrupt a lot of their employees had license plate frames with "TAKATA" on the top and "We Save Lives" on the bottom.
Having seen a carotid severed and a person bleed out in seconds, that must have been a horrifying scene to roll up on.
I really need to take action on those letters I’ve been getting …
> I really need to take action on those letters I’ve been getting …
"Bill... no... overdue taxes... no... IMPORTANT AIRBAG RECALL FOR YOUR VEHICLE... no... Ooo! Jesus is my Lord and Savior!"
Were they used in any US, Korean, European,… vehicles or just Japanese?
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/takata-recall-spotlight
It includes some VW, so not just Japanese. If you aren't sure if your vehicle is included, you need to check.
They were in a lot of Fords. Had them replaced in my mustang and read about a guy in South Carolina that hit a cow in his F-150 and wound up with a one inch hole through his throat.
Damn near everyone in at least one or two models.
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Well. Isn't that just terrifying.
I got a $50 gift card from Honda after doing my recall. I’d never seen anything like it. Didn’t realize this situation must be why
Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
I knew a girl this happened to. It nearly killed her and almost ended any chance she had of having children. She ended up getting addicted to opioids during her injuries and then was awarded over $600,000 in a lawsuit and it took her under a year to blow it all on drugs
She spent over $1650 a day on opioids and didn't die.
Don't believe everything you read on Reddit, kids.
It’s almost as if there’s many other things like rent and food and cars and parties and lawyer costs that could also contribute to the loss of money
Yeah in particular heroin is pretty darn cheap. I would have a very hard time believing she blew through that much that fast.
They buy four wheelers and take vacations too lol
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My FIL's Honda Accord had to be recalled. It took months to get it fixed due to parts shortage. A few months later, we got another recall notice because the parts they used were being recalled. We all forgot about it since he rarely drove the car. I finally got it fixed last year.
So sad. I worked in a Subaru dealership, almost 2 and a half years of my apprenticeship was spent replacing the passenger side airbags, first it was the replacement of essentially the same product but then the second replacement of the updated airbag. So. Many. Airbags.
I’m about to dump my bf and this is one of the many reasons why. His truck has this recall and he has told me flatly that he just doesn’t care to get it fixed and I’ll survive.
What was wild to me, was that the police first assumed that the earlier victims had died from stabbings or shootings. In one case, the police even had found a "person of interest" they wanted to interrogate.
This almost happened to me almost 2 years ago. I'm thankful to be alive. It was the middle of the night so not much traffic on the residential street I was one. I managed to get out my car in disoriented state and go up to the house closes to my car. I banged on windows snd doors. No one came out to help. I couldn't stand anymore and collapsed in their front yard in the cold pouring rain, thinking that was it. Said my final prayer. And closed my eyes. A young lady drove up. She just happened to be an RN. And put her coat over me and called 911 and kept me alive until medics came. It was a blessing. I'm so thankful for her. She was an angel. And I hate that I can't remember her name, for obvious reasons.
Sidenote: not only did the airbags send metal throughout my car but it broke every one of my ribs when it popped. I also has burns on my face and arms from the explosives.
FRONT
TOWARD ENEMY
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lightly bumped triggered the airbag?
Some components on the car wear down and break over time. Sensors become more sensitive or electrical components trigger more easily
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Just got those replaced... drove with them in for 2 or 3 years....
They replaced ANOTHER shrapnel airbag, which had replaced another shrapnel airbag.
lots of recalls... all about airbags. Thanks Ford.
Eh, incidental death by airbag claymore sounds better than death by cancer
What’s a Takata airbag?
I heard the ammonium nitrate Inflator canisters were rusted/worn
I used to work in dealership…. At least as a courtesy we offered rentals if a customer was well informed and felt in danger. Its been a while so i forgot if people are actually legally entitled to a rental vehicle. This may be something you can discuss with a service advisor.
So, besides the fact that the airbag ejected pieces of metal at deadly speeds, it would also deploy at unreasonably low speeds as well? There were two issues?
If you’re in Canada, the federal government has an information page here
OP her name was Ashley Parham not just Parham poor show
Lol soooo... her name is Parham and OP got it right? What are you whining about?
She should’ve just driver better
Iron0ne t1_is6zvcg wrote
I had those in one of my old cars. They announced the recall, then they were like we need to think about this for 6 months. Then they didn't have enough replacements.
I ended up in a queue basically for 9 months where the dealers only advice was "don't get in an accident".