Takata air bags now are 50% likely to thow shrapnel, still willing to risk it?

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/30/autos/takata-honda-airbag-warning/

"Federal safety regulators warned owners of more than 300,000 Hondas and Acuras to immediately stop driving their cars until their Takata airbags are replaced.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said new tests show the airbags at issue have a 50% chance of exploding when deployed in an accident -- compared to a 1% chance for other airbags.

"The risk posed by the airbag inflators in these vehicles is grave, and it is critical they be repaired now to avoid more deaths and serious injuries," said the agency's statement.

Nearly 70 million airbags in U.S. cars have been or will be recalled as part of a massive safety scandal enveloping Takata since 2014."

Still willing to put a loved one behind the wheel?

Already swapped my two affected cars. No point waiting on them. Got the letters and scheduled.

Human bodies cannot be fixed or replaced, WAY more important than the time to fix hunks of metal and plastic.

Ok, so can anyone explain to me what is actually happening with these things? What is the shrapnel being kicked out? What do they mean an airbag is 'exploding'? The dang things are supposed to explode right? The video on that link was pathetic and is clearly motivated by fear propaganda. All the numbers related with this mess also seem to be directly aimed at causing fear - except one: the actual number of deaths (10 deaths, total). Chicago kills more than 10 in one bad summer night due to gun violence.

Now, here is the list of cars that this warning is directly calling out:

The models identified by NHTSA include: 2001-2002 Honda Civic, 2001-2002 Honda Accord, 2002-2003 Acura TL, 2002 Honda CR-V, 2002 Honda Odyssey, 2003 Acura CL, 2003 Honda Pilot.

If 50% of crashes in all those cars have a shrapnel-throwing, incorrectly-exploding airbag, how can there be only 10 people dead from this?

In reply to Robbie:

It may just be click bait for all I know. Sucked me in s it scrolled across my phone.

I thought we had a recent thread about it in which most people here were not concerned, but couldn't find it. When I got to the part where it said 50% I wondered how many people would still feel that way.

Nick (picaso) Comstock wrote: Takata air bags now are 50% likely to thow shrapnel, still willing to risk it?...Still willing to put a loved one behind the wheel?

Senstionalize much?...It helps to put things into perspective by also quoting the actually important information, like the specific high risk vehicles question:

"The models identified by NHTSA include: 2001-2002 Honda Civic, 2001-2002 Honda Accord, 2002-2003 Acura TL, 2002 Honda CR-V, 2002 Honda Odyssey, 2003 Acura CL, 2003 Honda Pilot."

I don't have any 2001 data readily available. But in 2002 Honda sold roughly 400k Accords, 300k Civics, 150k CR-V's, 150k Oddysseys, and 60k Acura TL's. And in 2003 they sold another 100k Pilots, 50k Acura TL's, 10k Acura CL's. So assuming 2001 Civic and Accord sales were similar to 2002, that's around 1.9 Million of the above noted cars produced just in that timeframe.

Comparing hat 300k vs 1.9M, and it's get about 15% of those particular cars produced having a 50% chance of catastrophic airbag failure. Of course, then you have to weight it for environmental factors, "Cars located in humid regions of the country such as Texas, Florida and the Gulf Coast are at particular risk." Meaning cars having lived in those areas will be proportionally more likely to be a part of the 50% of 15%.

Sure it's bad, but it's not like everybody needs to immediately stop driving every Takata airbag equipped car, Honda or otherwise.

IIRC the core issue is that the propellant used in the bags can become more volatile with age and long-term humidity exposure. From my understanding the very early affected cars mentioned ('01-03 models) are the only ones with a true "design flaw" that can potentially throw shrapnel when the propellant explodes. There are millions of other affected cars with the propellant issue from the following decade, but the risk is exponentially lower with them (and likely only a high factor in hot, humid climates) and regulators are erring on the side of caution to recall vehicles that may never have an issue.

My 2013 Fit is an affected model, but I'm not really worried. It's pretty new and has lived its whole life in Wisconsin. The reason only 10 people have died out of the millions of cars with the flawed bags is because those owners tragically experienced the perfect storm of failure conditions. Lots of other people have crashed these and walked away with no issues.

In reply to Driven5:

See my post above yours.

Robbie wrote: If 50% of crashes in all those cars have a shrapnel-throwing, incorrectly-exploding airbag, how can there be only 10 people dead from this?

I would guess that significantly more than that have been injured, but that's the type of questions I wish reports would start asking (and answering) when putting these types of articles together.

In reply to Nick (picaso) Comstock:

I did...Right after I posted it.

Driven5 wrote:

Robbie wrote: If 50% of crashes in all those cars have a shrapnel-throwing, incorrectly-exploding airbag, how can there be only 10 people dead from this?

I would guess that significantly more than that have been injured, but that's the type of questions I wish reports would start asking (and answering) when putting these types of articles together.

I know. Dead is dead but if 10X as many people had their eyeballs ruptured by said shrapnel it's something I'd want to know.

Robbie wrote: Ok, so can anyone explain to me what is actually happening with these things? What is the shrapnel being kicked out? What do they mean an airbag is 'exploding'? The dang things are supposed to explode right?

A normal airbag deployment is a controlled detonation; it is supposed to deploy the charge outward to inflate the bag. Apparently what some of these are doing is exploding like a bomb when triggered; instead of the expected directional deployment, the whole damn thing just explodes, sending all sorts of fun mounting parts, steering wheel bits, etc into the driver's face.

Certainly not a good thing but thankfully the extremely high-risk vehicles are somewhat limited in number, as has already been noted above.

And yet VW is the one that got hammered and they killed 100% less people.

I suspect there are more deaths than the reported 10. Say there was a crash in which the driver was not expected to survive with a good airbag. That person may or may not have gotten enough shrapnel in their head to kill them, but they were on their way to dying anyway and I suspect those cases don't count against Takata. None of my cars are on the list (so far), but the list keeps getting bigger. For now I'll just keep driving and hope that I never see a deployed airbag in any of my vehicles.

We blew off a passengers airbag from a 00 Integra last night. We set a stuffed monkey on top, hit the battery, and it left one arm and a foot behind on its flight to the roof of the shop.

Airbags scare me, even when they work as designed.

T.J. wrote: And yet VW is the one that got hammered and they killed 100% less people.

Is the implication that Takata isn't getting hammered?

In reply to Driven5:

Yes, at least not nearly on the same scale. They are getting treated more like GM did with their killer ignition switch debacle that they skated out of after killing folks.

Takata doesn't seem to be "skating out" of anything.

In reply to dculberson:

Well, they will either go out of business entirely or be purchased out of bankruptcy by a (more than likely) Chinese company, so I guess they are suffering that. If you or I killed 10 people I doubt we would get to skate with only having to declare bankruptcy.

Well, you certainly don't want to drive them out of business at this point. There is a HUGE need for (good) replacement airbags, and they seem to be a prime supplier!

In reply to T.J.:

Consider that Takata is a $5B/yr supplier that violated the law by covering up a dangerous mistake. VW is a $235B/yr manufacturer that set out with the intention of violating both the law and public trust. I believe both should be heavily penalized for their actions. But penalties are only effective in the long run if they are proportional to not only the actions of those responsible, but also their means. Now, in addition to their record-breaking NHTSA fine and having to eat the cost of replacing upwards of 30 MILLION airbags, they are also facing numerous (costly) lawsuits and settlements outside of that...Which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Also consider that more than 100 people die on our roads every day, vs 10 people over the last 15 years. Hell, there is an entire profession essentially devoted to determining the value of a life...Sadly, our individual lives are not nearly as valuable as we'd like to think they are in the scheme of using fines and legal actions to prevent companies from willfully violating our laws.

It could also be very reasonably argued that the long term damage to our society by the VW emissions is substantially greater than the long term damage to our society by the Takata airbags.

In reply to T.J.:

I also think you are jumping the gun WRT what happens to Takata.

The whole VW thing was a lot easier to get through, as the laws were clear, the intention was clear, the scope was clear, etc. And it helped that, once exposed, VW didn't impede or fight.

This case is a lot different. I've never seen a supplier held accountable for something- it's always the end manufacturer. But this crosses many OEMs from one place. We find that Takata is not helping, and perhaps even impeding an investigation. The whole thing is just a mess in terms of connections and what actually was illegal.

So, IMHO, Takata will be faced with some kind of penalty. In addition to replacing all of the airbags. I don't see them getting a "get out of jail free" card. As a matter of fact, I would not be stunned if criminal charges are brought.

But it will probably take a LONG time.

Driven5 wrote: It could also be very reasonably argued that the long term damage to our society by the VW emissions is substantially greater than the long term damage to our society by the Takata airbags.

Let's just agree to disagree on this part.

T.J. wrote: And yet VW is the one that got hammered and they killed 100% less people.

Not directly, but here's an estimate of the likely number of illnesses VW's illegal emissions will cause:

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1102397_illegal-vw-diesel-emissions-tallying-public-health-damage

In reply to alfadriver:

Maybe I am jumping the gun and I agree only time will tell what happens in the end. As Drive5 posted, when there are 100+ auto-related deaths a day, then 10 deaths over 10+ is a drop in the bucket. I doubt that would be much consolation to the surviving family members though.

So, it seems like either the Takata airbag shrapnel debacle is either not all that big of a deal and the victim's lives weren't worth all that much anyway (Driven5) or the company intentionally sold a dangerous product and tried to cover it up and is not cooperating with the investigating, but we should all be patient because they will eventually get what they have coming (Alfa). I guess all I can do is wait and see which point of view is correct.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Interesting. So, if the total amount of pollution emitted by all of the cheating VW cars is about the same as one coal fired power plant and there are over 1500 coal plants in the US, this is essentially not an issue at all. It is statistical noise. The internet itself kills more people than the VW cars based only on the amount of electricity needed to keep the whole thing running. The VW punishment is not about people or the environment, it is all about making the EPA look like idiots.

In reply to T.J.:

Bear in mind- it's just my opinion that we have not seen the end game to Takata.