08/31/2021 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Cars
Updated 08/31/2021 6:01 AM
Less than a decade ago, the possibility of
defective Takata airbags
exploding in an accident became the most complex and far-reaching safety crisis in the history of the global automotive industry.
Approximately 100 million airbags were recalled worldwide.
But
Ruy Drisaldi, a 42-year-old man born in Buenos Aires
, never learned of the risks until last December.
It was then that
the airbag of the Honda CR-V
used by his wife exploded after another car collided with his near his home in Mérida, in southeastern Mexico, killing him.
The Takata case became the largest recall in the history of the auto industry.
Neither Drisaldi nor his wife, Janett Pérez, a US citizen, had received a single warning about the recall: "Someone must be responsible," he said.
"You buy a car with airbags and you assume you are protected. Now I realize that every year we had that car, we were driving with a gun pointed at our heads," he said.
While responses to Takata's recalls have largely faded from the public eye in much of the world, Drisaldi's story is a reminder that defective parts continue to put drivers at risk.
As of early July,
more than 14 million had yet to be repaired
in the US alone, in addition to an unknown but likely substantial number in the rest of the world.
That means millions of car owners like Drisaldi, especially in countries with weak consumer protections, may be unaware that the propellant used in their car airbags
could degrade as a result of heat and humidity
, turning their vehicles into potential weapons. against its users.
A global problem
So far, at least
37 deaths and 450 injuries
related to these defective parts
have been reported
worldwide.
Of the deaths, 19 occurred in the US, while others have been reported in every corner of the world, such as in French Guiana, Nigeria, Brazil, Australia or China.
Pérez's death, caused by a piece of metal that broke the bag and struck his neck, added Mexico to the list of fatalities.
The next day, a friend from Argentina sent Drisaldi a news clip about the explosion of the Takata airbag inflators and the withdrawal from the world market that ultimately led to the company going bankrupt.
Honda later confirmed that the driver's side airbag in Pérez's SUV exploded.
The incident in Mexico illustrates how safety recalls, even for fatal defects,
can go unnoticed
in parts of the world with weak regulatory regimes.
The problem is in the airbag inflator, which under hot and humid conditions, activates with greater force than necessary.
In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has taken unprecedented steps to not only oversee but also coordinate the campaign to replace the tens of millions of inflators.
An independent monitor also urged companies to adopt more effective disclosure techniques beyond what is required by law.
Nothing similar is happening in Mexico, where companies say there isn't even an effective registration system through which they can locate used car owners.
"While the system call to review US is flawed in other countries see systems that are practically nonexistent ,
" says Sean Kane, president of
Safety Research and Strategies Inc
.
The death of a driver of a Honda Accord in April is the latest Takata-related victim in the US Honda said it
had made more than 100 attempts
to contact the owners of that particular vehicle through calls, emails , letters sent by mail and even on home visits.
But in Mexico, companies have mainly used broad disclosure campaigns through advertisements placed in newspapers and advertisements on websites.
Heat and humidity, the explosive cocktail
Mérida, where Pérez died, is known for its heat and humidity.
Those are factors that researchers have said cause the ammonium nitrate propellant in airbags to become unstable and prone to inflating too strongly in an accident,
breaking the metal container
.
Many of the life-threatening inflators were manufactured at the Takata plant in Monclova, Mexico, and
were exposed to uncontrolled humidity conditions
, according to a NHTSA report.
Although it affected almost all car brands, Honda was the main customer of the airbag supplier company Takata.
Photo: AP
Frank Melton, a lawyer for Pérez's family, says his death "could have been prevented if the same replacement efforts used in the United States had been implemented in Mexico."
Honda has repaired about 72% of its affected cars in Mexico, compared to 89% in the US That means it
still has nearly 114,000 vehicles to repair
in the Aztec country.
The 41% Toyota vehicle rate means that nearly 144,000 owners may be driving without realizing the life-threatening air bags.
General Motors says it has repaired only 36% of its vehicles with recalled Takata airbags in Mexico, leaving 213,000 of those vehicles with potential problems.
As cars change ownership to second, third and even fourth owners, automakers have a harder time locating them, argued Chris Martin, Honda's manager of legal and regulatory communications in the US.
Automakers in the US must alert drivers to recalls through mailed notices and rely on state vehicle registration systems for directions.
In the Takata case, most automakers have used multiple sources of information that are updated more frequently than state systems, such as insurers and data from auto repair shops.
They have also used
email, postcards, certified mail and targeted ads on social media
, according to a January report by the NHTSA-appointed monitor overseeing the campaign.
How the case was handled in Argentina
The first stage of the preventive sanitation campaign
began in 2015
, when the problem was first identified.
At that time, they worked with one-to-one communications with the owners of the vehicles and a series of requests were published in the main newspapers of the country.
The international investigation was deepened by detecting more defective inflators, incorporating more car units to review.
This is how during 2017 the focus was on direct communication with customers through the sending of more than 90,000 emails,
15,000 phone calls
, 1,400 letters, as well as notices on the Honda website.
But the number of potentially affected vehicles continued to increase and this is how a new strategy called AIRBAG (Immediate Assistance for Free Air Bag Check) was added.
This new approach
consisted of an advertising campaign
, something unprecedented in a vehicle recall case.
Today a website is maintained where the customer only has to enter the chassis number of his vehicle to know if it is reached by the sanitation plan.
However, even before the pandemic, there were still 50,000 vehicles that had not changed their potentially defective airbag inflators.
Doubts about the scope of the case
According to Honda, Pérez's death is the only one related to a defective Takata airbag in Mexico.
Experts say
there is no global database
or investigative process used by authorities to find out if that's true.
"Cases are linked to these failures only when companies recognize the problem," says Alejandro Furas, director of the New Car Assessment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean Latin NCAP.
The nonprofit organization has been lobbying governments in the region to improve safety rules.
“Unfortunately, we are in the hands of the industry.
Companies know it and take advantage of it ”.
Kevin Fitzgerald, a former Takata engineer who resigned in 2014 and cooperated with the US government's investigation of the supplier, says he is skeptical that only one injury and one death occurred in Mexico.
"It's very hard to believe," he says.
"I just can't understand that."
Sources: Agencies, Honda and Honda Argentina
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