Topline
Nissan warned the owners of nearly 84,000 older vehicles to stop driving them because they are equipped with recalled airbag inflators, which have an increased risk of exploding in a crash, a defect regulators say has killed dozens of people and injured hundreds of others over nearly a decade.
The defective airbags have exploded and killed at least 27 people in the U.S., regulators said.
Key Facts
The “Do Not Drive” warning covers Nissan Sentra vehicles manufactured between 2002 and 2006, Pathfinder vehicles from 2002 to 2004 and 2002 and 2003 Infiniti QX4 vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday.
The vehicles are equipped with airbag inflators manufactured by Takata, which have exploded and killed at least 27 people in the U.S. and allegedly injured at least 400 others, according to the NHTSA.
Exposure to heat and humidity can cause the airbags to explode when deployed in a crash, causing metal shrapnel to shoot into the car’s interior.
An exploding front-passenger inflator killed one person in a 2006 Nissan Sentra, the automaker said, adding it notified the NHTSA of the incident in 2018 while reaching out to owners with unrepaired Takata airbag inflators multiple times.
Nissan said owners can check whether their car has the defective part through the automaker’s website, adding owners can contact a dealer to replace their inflators for free.
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Big Number
67 million. That’s how many Takata airbag inflators have been recalled in the U.S. by the NHTSA since 2019, the agency said. This is the largest series of automotive recalls in U.S. history, while an additional 33 have been recalled worldwide, according to the Associated Press.
Key Background
Nissan is the latest automaker to urge drivers not to use cars equipped with defective Takata airbag inflators, joining Ford, Dodge, BMW and Chrysler, among others. The automaker previously recalled over 736,000 cars with the inflators in 2020, though thousands of owners had yet to have the part replaced. The Transportation Department fined Takata $200 million for the defective airbag inflators in 2015, the largest civil penalty in the NHTSA’s history. Regulators have been asked to preserve all recalled inflators as part of a federal investigation, while also allowing the NHTSA to test them. Following years of regulatory scrutiny, Takata filed for bankruptcy in 2017.
Tangent
Last year, Kia notified the NHTSA of nearly 4 million vehicles likely equipped with defective airbag inflators from a Tennessee-based manufacturer. The NHTSA issued a recall request for the part—built by ARC Automotive—after the airbags exploded and killed at least two people. ARC Automotive responded to the recall request, saying it “strongly disagrees” with the agency’s conclusion while suggesting the company found no defect with the part after testing.
Further Reading