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Takata Report Blames U.S. Unit for Its Airbag Woes
An internal Takata Corp. analysis claims the supplier’s U.S. unit and not the parent company was primarily responsible for designing, testing and producing the company’s flawed airbag inflators.
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An internal Takata Corp. analysis claims the supplier’s U.S. unit and not the parent company was primarily responsible for designing, testing and producing the company’s flawed airbag inflators.
The report was among several released today by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Reuters says. The studies focus on Takata’s handling of quality, production and regulatory reporting concerning roughly 100 million inflators made over the past 16 years.
The devices can deteriorate when exposed to high heat and humidity, then explode and kill or injury vehicle occupants during a crash. The inflators have been blamed for at least 14 fatalities, triggering global recalls by more than a dozen carmakers. An earlier investigation by Takata revealed sloppy manufacturing methods at an inflator plant in Mexico that contributed to the crisis.
The Takata report details one instance in which the company learned of an inflator failure in Switzerland in 2003 but still had not reported it to regulators a decade later.
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