Revealed: The car models affected by Takata airbag recall, largest recall in automotive history
Channel: Flash video
Date: 2017-07-24

The recall is the largest in automotive history. It involves about 100 million vehicles worldwide, including 2.3 million in Australia.

It covers dozens of makes and models including Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Lexus, Jeep, Nissan, Chrysler and Dodge.
The product has been known to project fragments when a metal canister is blown apart.

Takata has since filed for bankruptcy protection in the US and Japan and said it would be bought by the US-based Key Safety Systems for $US1.6 billion.

Takata in early 2017 pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to pay a $US1 billion penalty for concealing the deadly defect.
The company anticipates the recall will not be completed until the end of 2019.

A 58-year-old man was killed last week when his Honda CRV hit another car at an intersection in Cabramatta.

NSW Police said a small fragment struck the driver in the neck before he died at the scene.

Police Sergeant Mark Casey said at the time: "This type of crash, in normal circumstances, would not have caused this level of injury."
Professor Chris Rowley from Kellogg College at the University of Oxford said Takata was able to get away with the faulty products for a long period of time because Japanese corporations lack a whistleblowing culture.

"Japan in the 1990s with the post bubble crisis made redundancies in corporations and it sort of put out a sway of middle managers, the connector between the shop floor and senior executives," he said.

"Once they'd gone, how does the shop floor worker approach the senior executive? It is never going to happen."

Australians are encouraged to check if their car is affected by visiting the ACCC Takata airbag recall page and contacting their manufacturer.


What's wrong with the airbags?

When there is a crash, airbags inflate with the aid of canisters that contain explosive propellants.

Takata airbags use ammonium nitrate - a chemical found to degrade after long-term exposure to high temperatures and humidity.

Degraded ammonium nitrate can cause inflators to become dangerously pressurised and explode when airbags deploy, sending shrapnel flying.