10 ms·

Takata’s Air Bag Crisis

81 points by usaphp 10y ago

BooneJS 10y ago
My 2007 CR-V is affected. Since I live in the northern part of the US, my airbag isn't a priority as they're doing southern states first.
- AmVess 10y ago
  I live in one of the driest states, and my air bags were swapped a year ago.
Animats 10y ago
Check your car by VIN here: https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/ https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
> Takada has only $520 million on hand and is worth about $340 million Does this mean they have $520m in cash, but the stock valve is less than their bank account?
- aab0 10y ago
  Sounds like it. Take into account the impending fine, all the lawsuits in many countries, the family control of the firm... Takata at this point could well be worth nothing at all.
  - chiph 10y ago
    They have other product lines (the article mentions their seat belt business), but my guess would be that the airbag liabilities would vastly exceed the income & valuation of those.
- dandandan 10y ago
  Yeah, the uncertainties about their future must weigh heavily on their value. If they fail to meet commitments set by the US they're liable for another 130mm in fines. That doesn't address the possibility of future lawsuits either.
- Vintila 10y ago
  They probably have debt aswell.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Seems very likely considering Japanese interest rates are near zero.
mc32 10y ago
There is little doubt these bags are dangerous and pose a known threat to passenger safety. But to call these car bombs is irresponsible. They are not purposely armed with the intent to inflict damage to people. Yes, they have design flaws which have resulted in deadly injuries. But while technically these are explosives to aid in deploying the safety mechanism, they are not bombs as most people understand things. This is as unjust as calling people who get arrested "disappeared" with all the connotations that word has (i.e. secret summary executions). This has the same approach, a bombastic approach to headline writing. For shame!
- mistermann 10y ago
  I didn't RTFA, did it happen to quote total recorded deployments of these bags vs noteworthy injury vs death?
  - mc32 10y ago
    13/100+/60,000,000-100,000,000 is the known tally. Not sure about injuries or if such numbers could be reliable as it could be hard to trace source of injury conclusively (as there may be many parts in motion or contact during a collision induced deployment.
- paganel 10y ago
  When I read that they used ammonium nitrate first thing I thought about was: "That's bomb-material, how can you put that into a running vehicle?". One of the worst road-side accidents that happened in my country was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion > The Mihăileşti explosion occurred on 24 May 2004 in the village of Mihăileşti, Buzău County, Romania. A truck loaded with ammonium nitrate rolled over and caught fire, and one hour later exploded killing at least 18 people and another 13 were wounded Notice the "one hour later" part. They are indeed ticking time bombs.
  - digler999 10y ago
    > That's bomb-material how else do you suggest they produce enough gas within milliseconds to inflate two or more airbags ?
danso 10y ago
A great longform article, one of the best indepth overviews of a company's culture and current controversies that I've read in awhile...and a pretty egregious controversy at that.
WallWextra 10y ago
The article mentions Honda's efforts to track down owners of cars with defective airbags. Why can't state motor vehicle registries cooperate in recalls like this?
- coredog64 10y ago
  I have an 11 year old Honda subject to the recall. I'm the third owner and I bought it from a dealer with no Honda affiliation. Honda has been bombarding me with notices, suggesting that the state _has_ been helping. What I'm more annoyed about is the UX. Honda is getting press puff pieces published about what an awesome job they're doing up to and including rental cars for people who are concerned while parts are on backorder. Meanwhile my local dealership told me that they'd drop me off/pick me up in their shuttle as long as I wasn't more than 2 miles away.
  - AmVess 10y ago
    User experience is going to vary widely because dealerships vary widely. The dealership where I bought my Honda gave me a loaner while my vehicle was repaired. I dropped my car off on the way to work, and picked up the loaner. The work was done by the time I got off work. The whole experience was painless.
- metaphor 10y ago
  A federal agency constructively coordinating with multiple state agencies...I believe that's considered an emerging paradigm shift. EDIT: To be sure, Honda isn't the only major vehicle manufacturer involved [1]. Observing that this isn't an explicit state issue and someone's got to foot the bill, this would almost certainly require some federal agency (e.g. NHTSA) compelling applicable states to act, a bureaucratic process that never goes smoothly in practice. [1] http://www.airbagrecall.com/home/ http://www.airbagrecall.com/home/
CamperBob2 10y ago
One of the early criticisms of air bags in passenger cars was that they were said to protect only people who aren't belted in, with nothing but potentially-injurious effects for anyone who is. Does anyone know if that is still (or was ever) true?
- sytse 10y ago
  Wearing a seat belt is always better. In the US they do adjust airbags to work for people not wearing them. Making the experience worse for people wearing a seat belt. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-airbags-in-a-car-dont-work-when-the-seat-belt-isnt-fastened/answer/Frank-Kemper https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-airbags-in-a-car-dont-...
- acomjean 10y ago
  I know someone who was hit head on. The airbag deployed, but she also had a bruise on her shoulder from the seatbelt. I think they work well together. I advocate both. I think part of the confusion might be in the US at least airbags are part of the "passive protection" which is designed to protect you if you do nothing (before airbags where afordable there were all manner of pretty bad automatic shoulder belts for cars provided the mandated protection.) https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=automatic+seatbelts https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=automatic+seatbelts
- dmckeon 10y ago
  I believe that was never true for vehicle occupants in the typical ranges of height, weight, and age. Failure to use seat-belts with earlier generations of airbags tended to lead to unbelted occupants "submarining" under the opening airbag, leading to lower body injuries, although the "submarining" jargon now appears to be applied to situation where a lap belt is wore higher on the abdomen rather than low on the hip bones, with the higher position tending to lead to abdominal injuries. With newer generations of airbag design and other tech such as active seat belt pre-tensioners, I would be extremely surprised to find any recommendations against wearing seatbelts, except perhaps for the 1 in 100,000 cases - near-term pregnant women or persons with recent abdominal surgery. Here's a detailed review (from the mid-90's) http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Report+to+Congress+Effectiveness+of+Occupant+Protection+Systems+and+Their+Use http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Repor... and more recent reports http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Behavioral+Reports:+Seat+Belts http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Be... http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html
metaphor 10y ago
> [Shigeshisa Takada] didn’t mention that Takata had tried to fix the problem by changing the propellant formula in 2008. My Acura TL is affected by this airbag recall, and it's a fairly recent 2012 model too. Whatever changed circa 2008 apparently didn't work. > NHTSA says those companies are making 70 percent of the replacement inflators. When I took it to the dealership for servicing about a week ago, I also inquiried about the airbag issue. According to service rep, it's a quick 30 minute fix assuming parts on hand...problem is the 30-45 day lead time for parts, which blew my mind away considering the nature of the issue in a state well known for its warm weather and humidity. Considering the logistic predicament, I wonder how quality will be affected given the number of 3rd-party players manufacturing a complex replacement component for a proprietary airbag system.
- lstamour 10y ago
  The 2008 fix, according to the article, started in Europe and was also used in China.
unexistance 10y ago
1998 article on the Paresh Khandhadia, the Takata engineer http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow-starter:takatas-non-azide-airbag-inflator-took-a-while-to-catch- http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow-...
- shiven 10y ago
  So, he basically created a very safe airbag inflator (tetrazole) and later screwed everything up by going with ammonium nitrate? WTF!
King-Aaron 10y ago
Very interesting read, and makes me recall back to being a kid and setting off airbags in the back yard. You could immediately tell the difference between the older propellant and the newer ones, though I wasn't aware of how poisonous it was for us.
riffraff 10y ago
the article mentions 13 deaths of which 10 in the US. This seems a very odd distribution, can someone explain it?
- m_mueller 10y ago
  Here's my guess: The US and Japan are the largest markets for Japanese cars (I think). Japanese who drive Japanese cars tend to switch to the latest model fairly often, at least more often than Americans. At least I'm seeing way more old cars when visiting the US.
- tmd83 10y ago
  Down the thread in the quora answer there is mention of US airbags deploying at higher pressure to try safeguarding people who aren't wearing seat belts. Could that potentially make the US versions more failure prone and unsafe?
- lb1lf 10y ago
  I can't explain it, but I have a couple of qualified guesses: a) Takata air bags, or more precisely - Takata airbags using the faulty initiators - are disproportionally allocated to the US market for some reason or the other. Perhaps other Takata plants supplying other markets use a slightly different explosive compound than the one being made at Moses Lake?* b) Perhaps authorities in other countries haven't investigated past crashes and concluded that the airbag caused the fatality, rather than the crash itself, hence they cannot claim that the airbag was to blame for any fatality. c) Perhaps they do have confirmed fatalities b/c of a Takata airbag, but haven't reported it to whatever authority provided the numbers for the article (yet, anyway). *) Bingo; found this as I read the article: "He says he hired a propellant specialist to help develop a more stable formula using guanidine nitrate, and since about 2008, Takata in Europe has sold air bags using that. He says Takata’s China team also adopted the formula."
- hga 10y ago
  I think tmd83 might be on to something (as well as m_mueller), the NHTSA decided in the ... '70s I think to make the tradeoff to maximally protect those who don't wear belt. But environmental conditions might also be a factor, the higher the heat and humidity, the faster the ammonium nitrate pellets turn into very dangerous powder. And that's being used to target the limited supply of replacement parts in the US. How does Japan's population distribution and climate compare to the US?
tomjen3 10y ago
Would it be better to deactivate my airbag until it can be replaced, or run the risk of having this issue pop out, assuming my car is affected? If it is worth anything I drive like a maniac.
- bunkat 10y ago
  Step 1 would be to stop driving like a maniac. Otherwise since there have been 13 deaths for millions of air bags, probably still safer to leave it activated. The chance of serious injury from your head striking the steering column is still significantly larger than shrapnel from a defective air bag injuring you.
princeb 10y ago
> Torture the data until it confesses such a sad and tragic misunderstanding of the meaning of this phrase.
masida 10y ago
I think this story also shows the problems with patents. If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they have used their dangerous ammonium nitrate mixture? It also shows the dangers of the drive for lower costs in companies like this. The current system is doomed to reintroduce the same problems all over again, regulation and more control will not change this.
- dspillett 10y ago
  > If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers It doesn't invalidate the question as a whole, but they would have been allowed to if they licensed the solution but that may have cost them more than developing their own (now known to be badly floored) solution. An active choice was made there.
- mikeash 10y ago
  The other side of that question is: if other airbag makers weren't able to patent the better mixture, would they ever have bothered to invent it? I'm not implying that the answer is necessarily "no," but the mere fact that patents discouraged the use of a safer mixture in one case doesn't tell the whole story.
- golergka 10y ago
  If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they invest money into inventing them in the first place?
userbinator 10y ago
As I understand it, the problem is that the explosive becomes more powerful over time, too powerful. Here's a wild idea --- how about "pre-aging" the explosive until it's reached basically its maximum "strength", and then filling the airbags with a smaller amount to provide the same equivalent force as before? It could save them even more... and they could spend some of the savings on making the casings stronger and thus less likely to fragment.
- gvb 10y ago
  It is not the force that changes, it is the rate of gas generation (burn rate). You need to generate airbag gasses fast enough to inflate before your face hits the airbag, but slow enough not to tear itself apart (especially the metal forming the gas generator). As the ammonium nitrate based gas generator mix ages, becomes less stable in that it burns faster, generates its gasses faster, and crosses the threshold between gas generation and explosion (RUD). Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_generator
  - hga 10y ago
    Does it become less "stable", or just much higher in speed of detonation? I don't remember reading any accounts of these airbags going off when they shouldn't have, just bad results once the system triggered them.
    - gvb 10y ago
      Stability here is being used in the chemical sense, as in "how fast it oxidizes". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability A gas generator (airbag inflater) does not detonate, it generates a large volume of gas very rapidly but at a designed (predictable) rate - the faulty airbags are detonating. Spontaneous ("accidental") deployment would be the ultimate bad instability, but I don't believe this was a major problem (yet). IIRC, there was one reference to an "accidental" deployment which could be instability-related or a fault elsewhere, e.g. in the sensor/trigger circuitry. The instability that is causing the major problems is causing faster combustion than designed.
etib 10y ago
I think the faulty airbags should be installed in all cars. The only way you rear end a car at 25mph is if you're tailgating. The problem is that people dont know they will be impaled by shrapnel in a collision. If they did in advance suddenly everyone would be paying a LOT more attention to driving.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Looking at it from a different angle, I close my eyes and dream about a world where everyone has roll cages, six-point harnesses, fire extinguishers, helmets, HANS'es, proper suits, and are rich enough to easily buy a new car, so that we could casually walk away from crashes with a smile. Make driving great again!
  - etib 10y ago
    A world where we can protect us from ourselves? Aiming only to remove risk feels like boilerplate code to me. For example: I like my motorbike without the cage, but I think you forgot about motorbikes in your vision :'(
  - hga 10y ago
    About the only think I regret from moving on from my first car, a 1967 Kaiser CJ-5 Jeep, was that by damn, its lapbelt locked me into place in a very comfortable seat. I really hate these modern slip slide all around only lock in a crash belts, and would love to drive wearing a 6 point harness ... but without the minor detail of getting a HANS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device) I'd be better off wearing no belt at all....
    - tropo 10y ago
      For me it's "only lock when urgently looking over shoulder and/or steering quickly". In other words, when I'm trying to avoid a crash, I'm kept from looking around and controlling the vehicle. Grrr. I've taken to driving with my left shoulder far forward to defeat the mechanism.
- 10y ago
etib 10y ago
I think the faulty airbags should be installed in all cars. The only way you rear end a car at 25mph is if you're tailgating. The problem is that people dont know they will be impaled by shrapnel in a collision. If they did in advance suddenly everyone would be paying a LOT more attention to driving.
feld 10y ago
My Subaru dealership can only order 5 airbags per day. I was a couple hundred deep in the list. They said it takes 4 hours to do one, but Subaru claims 2. I'm going to be waiting for quite a while.
- post_break 10y ago
  2 hours to pull it into the bay, 45 minutes to contemplate life, 15 minutes to swap the air bag, and 1 hour to day dream about an FA20 WRX STI. It's seriously so simple to swap, they are lying.
  - feld 10y ago
    my 2005 outback has to have the entire dash removed to do it.
    - post_break 10y ago
      Passenger side I assume, that would definitely take a long time.
      - feld 10y ago
        Correct!
hew 10y ago
http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by-american-honda-regarding-expanded-recall-of-takata-non-desiccated-passenger-front-airbag-inflators/ http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by-america... "Automobile models and model years included in the first stage of this recent expansion of the Takata non-desiccated passenger front inflator recall" Doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy as a 2006 Odyssey owner.
- hew 10y ago
  Yep, talking to myself: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa-expands-accelerates-takata-inflator-recall-05042016 http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa-expand... "The five recall phases are based on prioritization of risk, determined by the age of the inflators and exposure to high humidity and fluctuating high temperatures that accelerate the degradation of the chemical propellant." So I guess I'm a phase 2 or 3 kind of owner. Meanwhile, sitting at the vaunted 10 year marker in a hot 'n humid climate...
  - gambiting 10y ago
    At that point, I think that personally I would have it taken out.
  - RankingMember 10y ago
    In your situation I'd probably just yank the fuse until the replacement occurs. On that car it looks like it's in the interior fusebox on the driver's side, fuse #22, "IG SRS". You won't have any airbags in an accident with it pulled, but you also won't run the risk of getting the equivalent of a shotgun blast of metal shards to the face.
tropo 10y ago
Ammonium nitrate is at least non-toxic. You can sprinkle it on your soup. The exhaust gases are likewise harmless, and even have enough oxygen to keep you alive. Sodium azide is deadly both ways. Unreacted azide is nasty stuff. Sodium makes lye when it gets in your eyes or lungs, and is also an extreme fire hazard. There is no oxygen.

81 points by usaphp 10y ago

My 2007 CR-V is affected. Since I live in the northern part of the US, my airbag isn't a priority as they're doing southern states first.

AmVess 10y ago
I live in one of the driest states, and my air bags were swapped a year ago.

Animats 10y ago

Check your car by VIN here: https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/ https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

> Takada has only $520 million on hand and is worth about $340 million Does this mean they have $520m in cash, but the stock valve is less than their bank account?

aab0 10y ago
Sounds like it. Take into account the impending fine, all the lawsuits in many countries, the family control of the firm... Takata at this point could well be worth nothing at all.
- chiph 10y ago
  They have other product lines (the article mentions their seat belt business), but my guess would be that the airbag liabilities would vastly exceed the income & valuation of those.
dandandan 10y ago
Yeah, the uncertainties about their future must weigh heavily on their value. If they fail to meet commitments set by the US they're liable for another 130mm in fines. That doesn't address the possibility of future lawsuits either.
Vintila 10y ago
They probably have debt aswell.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Seems very likely considering Japanese interest rates are near zero.

mc32 10y ago

There is little doubt these bags are dangerous and pose a known threat to passenger safety. But to call these car bombs is irresponsible. They are not purposely armed with the intent to inflict damage to people. Yes, they have design flaws which have resulted in deadly injuries. But while technically these are explosives to aid in deploying the safety mechanism, they are not bombs as most people understand things. This is as unjust as calling people who get arrested "disappeared" with all the connotations that word has (i.e. secret summary executions). This has the same approach, a bombastic approach to headline writing. For shame!

mistermann 10y ago
I didn't RTFA, did it happen to quote total recorded deployments of these bags vs noteworthy injury vs death?
- mc32 10y ago
  13/100+/60,000,000-100,000,000 is the known tally. Not sure about injuries or if such numbers could be reliable as it could be hard to trace source of injury conclusively (as there may be many parts in motion or contact during a collision induced deployment.
paganel 10y ago
When I read that they used ammonium nitrate first thing I thought about was: "That's bomb-material, how can you put that into a running vehicle?". One of the worst road-side accidents that happened in my country was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion > The Mihăileşti explosion occurred on 24 May 2004 in the village of Mihăileşti, Buzău County, Romania. A truck loaded with ammonium nitrate rolled over and caught fire, and one hour later exploded killing at least 18 people and another 13 were wounded Notice the "one hour later" part. They are indeed ticking time bombs.
- digler999 10y ago
  > That's bomb-material how else do you suggest they produce enough gas within milliseconds to inflate two or more airbags ?

danso 10y ago

A great longform article, one of the best indepth overviews of a company's culture and current controversies that I've read in awhile...and a pretty egregious controversy at that.

WallWextra 10y ago

The article mentions Honda's efforts to track down owners of cars with defective airbags. Why can't state motor vehicle registries cooperate in recalls like this?

coredog64 10y ago
I have an 11 year old Honda subject to the recall. I'm the third owner and I bought it from a dealer with no Honda affiliation. Honda has been bombarding me with notices, suggesting that the state _has_ been helping. What I'm more annoyed about is the UX. Honda is getting press puff pieces published about what an awesome job they're doing up to and including rental cars for people who are concerned while parts are on backorder. Meanwhile my local dealership told me that they'd drop me off/pick me up in their shuttle as long as I wasn't more than 2 miles away.
- AmVess 10y ago
  User experience is going to vary widely because dealerships vary widely. The dealership where I bought my Honda gave me a loaner while my vehicle was repaired. I dropped my car off on the way to work, and picked up the loaner. The work was done by the time I got off work. The whole experience was painless.
metaphor 10y ago
A federal agency constructively coordinating with multiple state agencies...I believe that's considered an emerging paradigm shift. EDIT: To be sure, Honda isn't the only major vehicle manufacturer involved [1]. Observing that this isn't an explicit state issue and someone's got to foot the bill, this would almost certainly require some federal agency (e.g. NHTSA) compelling applicable states to act, a bureaucratic process that never goes smoothly in practice. [1] http://www.airbagrecall.com/home/ http://www.airbagrecall.com/home/

CamperBob2 10y ago

One of the early criticisms of air bags in passenger cars was that they were said to protect only people who aren't belted in, with nothing but potentially-injurious effects for anyone who is. Does anyone know if that is still (or was ever) true?

sytse 10y ago
Wearing a seat belt is always better. In the US they do adjust airbags to work for people not wearing them. Making the experience worse for people wearing a seat belt. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-airbags-in-a-car-dont-work-when-the-seat-belt-isnt-fastened/answer/Frank-Kemper https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-airbags-in-a-car-dont-...
acomjean 10y ago
I know someone who was hit head on. The airbag deployed, but she also had a bruise on her shoulder from the seatbelt. I think they work well together. I advocate both. I think part of the confusion might be in the US at least airbags are part of the "passive protection" which is designed to protect you if you do nothing (before airbags where afordable there were all manner of pretty bad automatic shoulder belts for cars provided the mandated protection.) https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=automatic+seatbelts https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=automatic+seatbelts
dmckeon 10y ago
I believe that was never true for vehicle occupants in the typical ranges of height, weight, and age. Failure to use seat-belts with earlier generations of airbags tended to lead to unbelted occupants "submarining" under the opening airbag, leading to lower body injuries, although the "submarining" jargon now appears to be applied to situation where a lap belt is wore higher on the abdomen rather than low on the hip bones, with the higher position tending to lead to abdominal injuries. With newer generations of airbag design and other tech such as active seat belt pre-tensioners, I would be extremely surprised to find any recommendations against wearing seatbelts, except perhaps for the 1 in 100,000 cases - near-term pregnant women or persons with recent abdominal surgery. Here's a detailed review (from the mid-90's) http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Report+to+Congress+Effectiveness+of+Occupant+Protection+Systems+and+Their+Use http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Repor... and more recent reports http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Behavioral+Reports:+Seat+Belts http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Be... http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html

metaphor 10y ago

> [Shigeshisa Takada] didn’t mention that Takata had tried to fix the problem by changing the propellant formula in 2008. My Acura TL is affected by this airbag recall, and it's a fairly recent 2012 model too. Whatever changed circa 2008 apparently didn't work. > NHTSA says those companies are making 70 percent of the replacement inflators. When I took it to the dealership for servicing about a week ago, I also inquiried about the airbag issue. According to service rep, it's a quick 30 minute fix assuming parts on hand...problem is the 30-45 day lead time for parts, which blew my mind away considering the nature of the issue in a state well known for its warm weather and humidity. Considering the logistic predicament, I wonder how quality will be affected given the number of 3rd-party players manufacturing a complex replacement component for a proprietary airbag system.

lstamour 10y ago
The 2008 fix, according to the article, started in Europe and was also used in China.

unexistance 10y ago

1998 article on the Paresh Khandhadia, the Takata engineer http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow-starter:takatas-non-azide-airbag-inflator-took-a-while-to-catch- http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow-...

shiven 10y ago
So, he basically created a very safe airbag inflator (tetrazole) and later screwed everything up by going with ammonium nitrate? WTF!

King-Aaron 10y ago

Very interesting read, and makes me recall back to being a kid and setting off airbags in the back yard. You could immediately tell the difference between the older propellant and the newer ones, though I wasn't aware of how poisonous it was for us.

riffraff 10y ago

the article mentions 13 deaths of which 10 in the US. This seems a very odd distribution, can someone explain it?

m_mueller 10y ago
Here's my guess: The US and Japan are the largest markets for Japanese cars (I think). Japanese who drive Japanese cars tend to switch to the latest model fairly often, at least more often than Americans. At least I'm seeing way more old cars when visiting the US.
tmd83 10y ago
Down the thread in the quora answer there is mention of US airbags deploying at higher pressure to try safeguarding people who aren't wearing seat belts. Could that potentially make the US versions more failure prone and unsafe?
lb1lf 10y ago
I can't explain it, but I have a couple of qualified guesses: a) Takata air bags, or more precisely - Takata airbags using the faulty initiators - are disproportionally allocated to the US market for some reason or the other. Perhaps other Takata plants supplying other markets use a slightly different explosive compound than the one being made at Moses Lake?* b) Perhaps authorities in other countries haven't investigated past crashes and concluded that the airbag caused the fatality, rather than the crash itself, hence they cannot claim that the airbag was to blame for any fatality. c) Perhaps they do have confirmed fatalities b/c of a Takata airbag, but haven't reported it to whatever authority provided the numbers for the article (yet, anyway). *) Bingo; found this as I read the article: "He says he hired a propellant specialist to help develop a more stable formula using guanidine nitrate, and since about 2008, Takata in Europe has sold air bags using that. He says Takata’s China team also adopted the formula."
hga 10y ago
I think tmd83 might be on to something (as well as m_mueller), the NHTSA decided in the ... '70s I think to make the tradeoff to maximally protect those who don't wear belt. But environmental conditions might also be a factor, the higher the heat and humidity, the faster the ammonium nitrate pellets turn into very dangerous powder. And that's being used to target the limited supply of replacement parts in the US. How does Japan's population distribution and climate compare to the US?

tomjen3 10y ago

Would it be better to deactivate my airbag until it can be replaced, or run the risk of having this issue pop out, assuming my car is affected? If it is worth anything I drive like a maniac.

bunkat 10y ago
Step 1 would be to stop driving like a maniac. Otherwise since there have been 13 deaths for millions of air bags, probably still safer to leave it activated. The chance of serious injury from your head striking the steering column is still significantly larger than shrapnel from a defective air bag injuring you.

princeb 10y ago

> Torture the data until it confesses such a sad and tragic misunderstanding of the meaning of this phrase.

masida 10y ago

I think this story also shows the problems with patents. If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they have used their dangerous ammonium nitrate mixture? It also shows the dangers of the drive for lower costs in companies like this. The current system is doomed to reintroduce the same problems all over again, regulation and more control will not change this.

dspillett 10y ago
> If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers It doesn't invalidate the question as a whole, but they would have been allowed to if they licensed the solution but that may have cost them more than developing their own (now known to be badly floored) solution. An active choice was made there.
mikeash 10y ago
The other side of that question is: if other airbag makers weren't able to patent the better mixture, would they ever have bothered to invent it? I'm not implying that the answer is necessarily "no," but the mere fact that patents discouraged the use of a safer mixture in one case doesn't tell the whole story.
golergka 10y ago
If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they invest money into inventing them in the first place?

userbinator 10y ago

As I understand it, the problem is that the explosive becomes more powerful over time, too powerful. Here's a wild idea --- how about "pre-aging" the explosive until it's reached basically its maximum "strength", and then filling the airbags with a smaller amount to provide the same equivalent force as before? It could save them even more... and they could spend some of the savings on making the casings stronger and thus less likely to fragment.

gvb 10y ago
It is not the force that changes, it is the rate of gas generation (burn rate). You need to generate airbag gasses fast enough to inflate before your face hits the airbag, but slow enough not to tear itself apart (especially the metal forming the gas generator). As the ammonium nitrate based gas generator mix ages, becomes less stable in that it burns faster, generates its gasses faster, and crosses the threshold between gas generation and explosion (RUD). Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_generator
- hga 10y ago
  Does it become less "stable", or just much higher in speed of detonation? I don't remember reading any accounts of these airbags going off when they shouldn't have, just bad results once the system triggered them.
  - gvb 10y ago
    Stability here is being used in the chemical sense, as in "how fast it oxidizes". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability A gas generator (airbag inflater) does not detonate, it generates a large volume of gas very rapidly but at a designed (predictable) rate - the faulty airbags are detonating. Spontaneous ("accidental") deployment would be the ultimate bad instability, but I don't believe this was a major problem (yet). IIRC, there was one reference to an "accidental" deployment which could be instability-related or a fault elsewhere, e.g. in the sensor/trigger circuitry. The instability that is causing the major problems is causing faster combustion than designed.

etib 10y ago

I think the faulty airbags should be installed in all cars. The only way you rear end a car at 25mph is if you're tailgating. The problem is that people dont know they will be impaled by shrapnel in a collision. If they did in advance suddenly everyone would be paying a LOT more attention to driving.

Bromskloss 10y ago
Looking at it from a different angle, I close my eyes and dream about a world where everyone has roll cages, six-point harnesses, fire extinguishers, helmets, HANS'es, proper suits, and are rich enough to easily buy a new car, so that we could casually walk away from crashes with a smile. Make driving great again!
- etib 10y ago
  A world where we can protect us from ourselves? Aiming only to remove risk feels like boilerplate code to me. For example: I like my motorbike without the cage, but I think you forgot about motorbikes in your vision :'(
- hga 10y ago
  About the only think I regret from moving on from my first car, a 1967 Kaiser CJ-5 Jeep, was that by damn, its lapbelt locked me into place in a very comfortable seat. I really hate these modern slip slide all around only lock in a crash belts, and would love to drive wearing a 6 point harness ... but without the minor detail of getting a HANS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device) I'd be better off wearing no belt at all....
  - tropo 10y ago
    For me it's "only lock when urgently looking over shoulder and/or steering quickly". In other words, when I'm trying to avoid a crash, I'm kept from looking around and controlling the vehicle. Grrr. I've taken to driving with my left shoulder far forward to defeat the mechanism.
10y ago

etib 10y ago

feld 10y ago

My Subaru dealership can only order 5 airbags per day. I was a couple hundred deep in the list. They said it takes 4 hours to do one, but Subaru claims 2. I'm going to be waiting for quite a while.

post_break 10y ago
2 hours to pull it into the bay, 45 minutes to contemplate life, 15 minutes to swap the air bag, and 1 hour to day dream about an FA20 WRX STI. It's seriously so simple to swap, they are lying.
- feld 10y ago
  my 2005 outback has to have the entire dash removed to do it.
  - post_break 10y ago
    Passenger side I assume, that would definitely take a long time.
    - feld 10y ago
      Correct!

hew 10y ago

http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by-american-honda-regarding-expanded-recall-of-takata-non-desiccated-passenger-front-airbag-inflators/ http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by-america... "Automobile models and model years included in the first stage of this recent expansion of the Takata non-desiccated passenger front inflator recall" Doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy as a 2006 Odyssey owner.

hew 10y ago
Yep, talking to myself: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa-expands-accelerates-takata-inflator-recall-05042016 http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa-expand... "The five recall phases are based on prioritization of risk, determined by the age of the inflators and exposure to high humidity and fluctuating high temperatures that accelerate the degradation of the chemical propellant." So I guess I'm a phase 2 or 3 kind of owner. Meanwhile, sitting at the vaunted 10 year marker in a hot 'n humid climate...
- gambiting 10y ago
  At that point, I think that personally I would have it taken out.
- RankingMember 10y ago
  In your situation I'd probably just yank the fuse until the replacement occurs. On that car it looks like it's in the interior fusebox on the driver's side, fuse #22, "IG SRS". You won't have any airbags in an accident with it pulled, but you also won't run the risk of getting the equivalent of a shotgun blast of metal shards to the face.

tropo 10y ago

Ammonium nitrate is at least non-toxic. You can sprinkle it on your soup. The exhaust gases are likewise harmless, and even have enough oxygen to keep you alive. Sodium azide is deadly both ways. Unreacted azide is nasty stuff. Sodium makes lye when it gets in your eyes or lungs, and is also an extreme fire hazard. There is no oxygen.