An executive from Takata says the company’s replacement air bags are safe, since they don’t have an inflator shaped like a “batwing”.
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Kevin Kennedy, Takata’s North American executive vice president, said he couldn’t commit during the hearing to establish such a fund, requested by Sen.
Mr. Kennedy faced additional questions about the continued use of ammonium nitrate in air-bag inflaters, and said it was only a possible contributing cause to explosions. But the report also emphasised that the agency has the capability to make some significant changes on its own, without the help of Congress. In particular, the committee urged the safety agency to use its authority to expand the source of replacement parts and the number of authorised repair facilities to speed up fixes under the recall.
The faulty air bags, which can explode and send shrapnel flying into vehicle cabins, have so far been tied to eight deaths and more than 100 injuries world-wide. The Japanese company believes the problem is related to long-term exposure to high heat and humidity. The FAA has 6,000 employees, compared to 90 at NHTSA, Blumenthal said.
Takata has previously said that propellant left out on the floor could become exposed to moisture, making it more unstable.
“Is that not a glaring deficiency?” Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) and Blumenthal said they supported investing more with auto- safety regulators. Sen. He said if the person spends four hours per day looking at complaints, that’s over 80 complaints per hour, less than a minute each. “It’s overwhelming”.
DETROIT: The USA agency that polices vehicle safety is not likely to get more money from Congress to overhaul its defective investigation system or deal with one of the most complex recalls in its history, lawmakers said on Tuesday. Nelson said this after displaying gruesome pictures of a Miami woman injured by a piece of shrapnel that flew out of her driver’s side air bag after she was in an accident.
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut compared the eight deaths now linked to Takata air bags to the 13 deaths initially cited by GM over its defective ignition switches.
One of the reports, issued by the committee in advance of Tuesday’s hearings, said internal emails showed Takata stopped performing internal safety audits to save money just as the scope of the crisis was growing.
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“NHTSA isn’t following basic best practices and these are problems that can’t be solved by throwing additional resources at the problem”, the Republican Chairman of the Senate commerce committee, John Thune of South Dakota, told NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind.
