Airbag Recall: Defect Could Cause Serious Injury or Death

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KLIX) – Some 85 million potentially defective airbag inflators – installed in vehicles made by 14 different automakers – may need to be recalled.

The devices were installed in cars mostly between 2002 and 2015. According to Consumer Reports, "Some of those airbags could deploy explosively, injuring or even killing car occupants."

The problem was first made public when The New York Times published a story in early November 2014 that Takata was aware of defects with some of its bags years before the company filed paperwork with federal regulators. The defects are serious and has cost some people their lives.

The dangerous problem lies with the airbag’s inflator, a metal cartridge filled with propellant wafers. “If the inflator housing ruptures in a crash,” according to Consumer Reports, “metal shards from the airbag can be sprayed throughout the passenger cabin—a potentially disastrous outcome from a supposedly life-saving device.”

On March 31 in Texas, a 17-year-old male died from blunt force trauma to his neck after pieces of the inflator tore through the airbag after the teen read-ended another car, ABC News reported.

There apparently seems to be multiple causes for the potential malfunction. So far, about 28 million passenger and driver-side airbag inflators by Takata have been recalled.

To see a timeline of events since the defects were first announced and, more importantly, to see if your car has a potentially defective airbag inflator, check out this page by Consumer Reports.