Recently Stellantis has issued an urgent warning to owners of Citroën C3 and DS Automobiles DS 3, manufactured between 2009 and 2019, asking them to stop using them immediately. This recall is part of a series of campaigns that began in 2020 regarding Takata airbags. Such faulty devices they can in fact degrade in hot and humid weather conditions, causing over-inflation and potentially serious injury or death in the event of an accident. BMW had also addressed the issue in April 2023 by recalling 17 models. The issue of defective Takata airbags has been ongoing for years: in 2022 Volkswagen, in 2018 Toyota and in 2016 in the USA approximately 12 million vehicles were recalled. Ford had already decided to no longer use these airbags in 2015. To date in the United States, these airbags are responsible for at least 27 deaths and over 400 injuries.
The investigations of NHTSA and the student’s case
In the 1990s, Takata began producing smaller, more affordable airbags, favored by automakers, but it was already in the early 2000s that the first suspicions began to emerge regarding a link between serious accidents and the Japanese company’s airbags. Honda was the first to recall vehicles in 2008, but in 2009 an American student died from metal shrapnel from the airbag. The problem lay in the use of ammonium nitrate, a cheap chemical that, in the absence of a drying agent, can become dangerously unstable in hot and humid conditions. There NHTSA conducted several investigations, first against Honda and then against Takata, increasing the recalls involving eleven manufacturers, including Ford, BMW, Mazda, Citroën, DS and Toyota. In 2017 Takata declared bankruptcy with debts of 8 billion euros, leaving 46 thousand employees without work. To date, 45 million airbags have been replaced in the United States, with global estimates indicating up to 100 million vehicles potentially affected.
Toyota, huge recall of over 50 thousand cars due to an airbag defect
Auto is also on YouTube, subscribe and activate the bell
