Driver of vehicles with faulty airbags manufactured by Takata will collectively receive nearly $9.8 million (RM41 million) from a restitution fund a part of the auto parts supplier’s guilt plea for the production of airbag inflators which have been known to inflate with excessive force, with injuries and deaths resulting, according to The Detroit News.
The first round of payments going to 102 recipients would range from $643.40 (RM2,693.70) up to $608,013 (RM2.5 million), said the United States District Court in the eastern district of Michigan as quoted by the news site. Payments were calculated from a formula which awarded points worth $64.34 each to driver who filed claims for injuries sustained from faulty Takata airbags.
Points were awarded by a special master to oversee the restitution fund, based on “injury categories in an injury valuation matrix and certain other factors”, the report said. Recalls for Takata airbags have comprised nearly 13% of all registered vehicles in the US, where faulty Takata inflators have ben linked to 16 deaths and more than 25 injuries, according to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration.
A recall campaign for the Japanese parts maker’s airbags in February this year found a further 1.7 million vehicles with faulty inflators including brands such as Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Audi. In Malaysia, over 500,000 cars have been found to have faulty Takata inflators as of October last year.
Recalls for faulty Takata airbag inflators date back as far as 2010, when Honda identified the problem to be excessive moisture intake by the inflator propellant, causing the propellant to break down and deploy airbags with more force than intended.
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Jap thinking, money can replace life. No wonder they treat human lives like currency.
Takata knew about the faulty airbags for years, but never did anything. It is more important for the Japanese to save their face and pride than those lives lost to the airbags.
Actually Takata did do something once Takata knew airbags were exploding in the field. Takata went public with an IPO on the Tokyo stock exchange. The company had been privately owned for many decades prior to the first PSAN airbag ruptures in the field. Once that happened Takata went public. However, the general public didn’t know Takata inflators had started fragmenting in cars at that time.
Takata did do something three years after Inflators started rupturing in cars. They sold the problem to the public in the form of an IPO in November 2006. The general public wouldn’t learn that the first inflator ruptured in a car in 2003, then again in 2004 until this NHTSA report came out more than 12 years later (see page 4)
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/takata_report_internal_investigation.pdf
According to this, Takata sold the problem to the public in 2006.
https://www.crunchbase.com/ipo/takata-corporation-ipo–5d89e857
Takata delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange in 2017. Takata had been privately owned since the 1930s, for 3 generations.
So Takata did do something about the problem. They sold it to the public before the public new about it.
Japan don’t care about the safety of others, even their safety systems are made to kill!
as known from newspaper report there are at least 2 death related to City faulty airbag in MY… but not authority in MY take responsibility to take action and i guess TAKATA won’t give a cents to these family… this is Malaysia….
from usd643? seriously?
Takata did do something three years after Inflators started rupturing in cars. They sold the problem to the public in the form of an IPO in November 2006. The general public wouldn’t learn that the first inflator ruptured in a car in 2003, then again in 2004 until this NHTSA report came out more than 12 years later (see page 4)
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/takata_report_internal_investigation.pdf
According to this, Takata sold the problem to the public in 2006.
https://www.crunchbase.com/ipo/takata-corporation-ipo–5d89e857
Takata delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange in 2017. Takata had been privately owned since the 1930s, for 3 generations.
So Takata did do something about the problem. They sold it to the public before the public new about it.
Great article Mick Chan. It’s good you’ve brought more visibility to the Takata Airbag Recall. I worked on airbag inflator designs for many years. Last year I conducted testing on more than 150 recalled Takata inflators that I purchased from vendors that sold them to me as replacement parts from salvage vehicles. When I did this testing last year I noticed indications that aggressive deployment was relatively likely. Many people don’t realize that the recalled Takata PSAN inflators can cause injury when they inflate the bag too aggressively. These inflators do not necessary have to fragment (explode and shoot metal shrapnel at the occupant) to injure a person. They can also injure people by “aggressive deployment”. Inflator fragmentation is likely to cause very series injuries or death, but testing has shown that aggressive deployment is more likely to occur than than fragmentation, and it can injure people too.