Nissan has warned owners of about 84,000 older vehicles to stop driving them because they have recalled airbag inflators, which pose a greater risk of explosion in the event of a crash, a defect that regulators say killed dozens of people and injured many. more for almost a decade.
The “Do Not Drive” warning covers Nissan Sentra cars made between 2002 and 2006, Pathfinder cars from 2002 to 2004 and 2002 and 2003 Infiniti QX4 cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Wednesday.
The cars are equipped with airbag inflators made by Takata, which exploded and killed at least 27 other people in the U. S. At least 400 others are believed to have been injured, according to the NHTSA.
Exposure to heat and humidity can cause airbags to burst when deployed in an accident, causing steel fragments to be thrown into the car’s interior.
The front passenger inflator explosion killed a rider in a 2006 Nissan Sentra, the automaker said, adding that it notified NHTSA of the incident in 2018 while communicating with owners of unrepaired Takata airbag inflators.
Nissan said owners can check if their car has the defective component on the automaker’s website, adding that owners can contact a broker to upgrade their inflators for free.
Receive text alerts from Forbes Breaking News: We send SMS alerts to keep you up to date with the most important news making the day’s headlines. Send “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or register here.
67 million. That’s the number of Takata airbag inflators that have been recalled in the U. S. through NHTSA since 2019, the firm said. This is the largest series of motor vehicle recalls in U. S. history. 33 others have been recalled worldwide, according to the Associated Press.
Nissan is the slowest automaker to urge drivers not to use cars with defective Takata airbag inflators, joining Ford, Dodge, BMW and Chrysler, among others. In the past, the automaker had recalled more than 736,000 cars supplied with inflators in 2020, thousands of owners have yet to replace the component. The Transportation Takedown fined Takata $200 million for defective airbag inflators in 2015, the largest civil penalty in NHTSA history. Regulators were asked to suspend the recall of all inflators as part of a federal investigation, while also allowing NHTSA to verify them. After years of regulatory scrutiny, Takata filed for bankruptcy in 2017.
Last year, Kia rated NHTSA nearly four million cars, most likely provided with defective airbag inflators from a Tennessee-based manufacturer. NHTSA issued a recall request for the component built through ARC Automotive after the airbags exploded and killed at least two people. ARC Automotive responded to the recall request by saying it “strongly disagreed” with the agency’s conclusion, while suggesting that the company had discovered some defect in the component after testing.
A community. Lots of voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.
Our network aims to connect other people through open and thoughtful conversations. We need our readers to share their perspectives and exchange ideas and facts in one space.
To do so, please comply with the posting regulations in our site’s terms of use. Below we summarize some of those key regulations. In short, civilians.
Your message will be rejected if we notice that it appears to contain:
User accounts will be locked if we become aware that users are engaging in:
So how can you become a user?
Thank you for reading our Community Standards. Read the full list of publishing regulations discovered in our site’s terms of use.