Even though there’s an extensive recall and repair campaign going on over Takata’s potentially lethal airbags, consumers’ lives are still at risk.
Last week, Honda reported yet another injury in one of their cars fitted with a Takata airbag. A driver of a 2002 Accord was injured on March 3, in Las Vegas, AutoNews reports, adding that the driver suffered a punctured trachea, but is expected to live.
Upon investigation, Honda found that that particular car was repaired twice under the faulty airbag inflator recall, in February 2012, and in January 2015, both times by official dealers. However, some months after the second repair, it was totaled, and a year later, it was sold as a salvage title to its current owner.
During the rebuild, it’s believed that the vehicle was fitted with an Alpha module, from a 2001 Accord, which was part of the first wave of defective parts, and is blamed in 8 out of 10 US deaths involving the dangerous Takata airbag inflators.
Honda understands that the module was bought from a salvage yard, against their directive to avoid this practice, which is punishable by federal regulations as well.
Applying these rules is anything but easy, as it’s almost impossible to track down the source of a defective part, which is why the automaker says to have bought more than 60,000 inflators, from salvage resellers, over the last two years.
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