The Transportation Department’s agreement with Takata requires it to pay up to $200 million and to stop selling inflators that use an ammonium nitrate propellant linked to the deaths and to almost 100 injuries caused by ruptured air bags.
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Honda Motor Co said it was ditching air bag inflators made by Takata, adding that it was “deeply troubled” by evidence suggesting Takata “misrepresented and manipulated test data”.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is fining Takata at least $70 million and possibly up to $200 million if the supplier does not adequately comply with a plan to accelerate recalls of defective airbags.
“Today’s actions are long overdue, but I remain concerned that Takata will be able to sell a few inflaters with ammonium nitrate until the end of 2018”, Florida Sen. He said the settlement will “enable us to focus on rebuilding the trust of automakers, regulators and the driving public”.
The penalty comes as regulators have imposed a series of increasingly aggressive penalties against manufacturers that break auto safety laws.
“Meager fines do nothing more than alter the expenses of doing business and offer no significant deterrence for continuing reprehensible and reckless conduct that costs innumerable preventable harms and lives”, Takata said in a combined statement.
“On a global basis, no new Honda and Acura models now under development will be equipped with a front driver or passenger Takata air bag inflator”, the automaker said Tuesday.
In January 1970, Honda had to pay a $70 million penalty after failing to report hundreds of death and injury claims to the USA government. “Until they can prove that it is safe, we will not see ammonium nitrate in these airbags in the future”. In a few instances the defective airbags have exploded, sending metal shrapnel through the auto.
NHTSA said in its announcement that Takata provided both regulators and customers with selective, incomplete or inaccurate data dating back to at least 2009.
In particular, “vehicles that have spent significant continuous time periods in areas of high absolute humidity, such as the Gulf Coast region and Puerto Rico, are at a higher risk of rupture” than those driven in cooler, less humid climes, according to a federal outline of the agreement. Investigators have said that the exploding airbags could have been caused by the airbags inflating.
“Today, we are holding Takata responsible for its failures”, NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said.
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Under the settlement’s terms, regulators will also assign an independent monitor to audit the company’s safety practices for several years, the person said.
