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NHTSA Plans Takata Recall Hearing in October
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will hold a public hearing on Oct. 22 to help coordinate U.S. recalls by 11 vehicle manufacturers covering 19 million cars and trucks equipped with Takata Corp. airbag inflators that could explode.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will hold a public hearing on Oct. 22 to help coordinate U.S. recalls by 11 vehicle manufacturers covering 19 million cars and trucks equipped with Takata Corp. airbag inflators that could explode.
The agency said in May it intended to take charge of what it described as a "patchwork" approach to the issue. Doing so invokes a regulatory power NHTSA has never used before. Among other things, the agency could order the sequence in which vehicles are recalled.
Takata and carmakers agree that high heat and humidity can degrade the inflators over time, making them more susceptible to a misfire. But no one can accurately predict the rate of degradation or determine exactly how long it takes to create a problem. Consequently, manufacturers have taken a variety of approaches to their inflator recall campaigns.
Carmakers have generally concentrated on first replacing Takata inflators in older models located in hot and humid climates. But NHTSA has indicated that vehicles in other regions should eventually be repaired too.
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