Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

Takata is in the middle of recalling nearly 12 million automobiles worldwide for faulty airbags. The Japanese manufacturer’s defective airbags have been linked to numerous injuries and deaths. The airbags contain a faulty inflator that can explode and project shrapnel at high speeds, resulting in injuries and death to drivers and passengers.

In the United States, 8 million cars have been recalled due to the faulty airbags, including automobiles manufactured by Honda, Toyota, and General Motors among others. General Motors and Toyota have even gone as far as to issue warnings to owners of recalled models to ban passengers from the front seat, where they are closest to the possibly defective air bags. Toyota has told dealers who do not have replacement parts to disable the passenger-side front air bag and place a warning label on the dashboard.

On Saturday, Nissan announced that it is recalling more than 52,000 vehicles with Takata airbags. The newest of the recalled vehicles were sold or registered in 12 high-humidity states. Humidity can cause the Takata bags propellant to burn too fast and potentially blow apart the metal canisters. The states affected states include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas as well as the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Saipan, Guam and American Samoa.

Honda has also added hundreds of thousands of vehicles in those same states to an earlier announced recall, including older versions of their three most popular models: the Accord, Civic and CR-V. The company had previously recalled five million vehicles in the United States for issues with Takata airbags.

The following is an updated list of all the vehicles recalled to date:

BMW

2000 – 2005 3 Series Sedan

2000 – 2006 3 Series Coupe

2000 – 2005 3 Series Sports Wagon

2000 – 2006 3 Series Convertible

2001 – 2006 M3 Coupe

2001 – 2006 M3 Convertible

Ford

2004 – Ranger

2005 – 2006 GT

2005 – 2007 Mustang

Mitsubishi

2004 – 2005 Lancer

2006 – 2007 Raider

Nissan

2001 – 2003 Nissan Maxima

2001 – 2004 Nissan Pathfinder

2002 – 2004 Nissan Sentra

2001 – 2004 Infiniti I30/I35

2002 – 2003 Infiniti QX4

2003 – 2005 Infiniti FX35/FX45

Honda

2001 – 2007 Honda Accord)

2001 – 2002 Honda Accord

2001 – 2005 Honda Civic

2002 – 2006 Honda CR-V

2003 – 2011 Honda Element

2002 – 2004 Honda Odyssey

2003 – 2007 Honda Pilot

2006 – Honda Ridgeline

2003 – 2006 Acura MDX

2002 – 2003 Acura TL/CL

2005 – Acura RL

Mazda

2003 – 2007 Mazda 6

2006 – 2007 Mazda Speed 6

2004 – 2008 Mazda RX-8

2004 – 2005 MPV

2004 – B-Series Truck

Subaru

2003 – 2005 Baja

2003 – 2005 Legacy

2003 – 2005 Outback

2004 – 2005 Impreza

Toyota

2002 – 2005 Lexus SC

2002 – 2005 Toyota Corolla

2003 – 2005 Toyota Corolla Matrix

2002 – 2005 Toyota Sequoia

2003 – 2005 Toyota Tundra

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Takata has been accused of knowing its airbags were defective long before the deaths and injuries, according to two former employees of the Japanese manufacturer.

The workers told the New York Times that Takata knew about the defects as far back as 2004. The company learned one of its airbags exploded and ejected metal pieces at a driver in Alabama, so it apparently began secret testing at its U.S. headquarters located in Michigan. The testing was conducted outside normal work hours and was never disclosed until recently.

After three months of secret testing, employees realized the problem was with the welding on the airbag’s inflator canister, but the investigation was shut down and employees were told to destroy all testing data.

Four years later Takata reported the faulty airbags in a regulatory filing. In November 2008, the first Takata airbags were recalled.

The law requires that car manufacturers report safety defects to the government within five days once they are identified. In 2008, Takata’s airbag recalls slowly unraveled, but last month the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave these recalls a big push. NHTSA issued a consumer advisory which urged drivers to immediately check if their vehicle’s airbags had been recalled and to arrange for a repair as soon as possible.

This year has seen the most auto recalls in U.S. history. To date, 11 car manufacturers have recalled more than 14 million vehicles worldwide. In regards to Takata, four deaths have been linked to the defective airbags and at least 139 people have been injured.

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The first round of recalls involving vehicles equipped with certain defective airbags manufactured by Takata came to light in November 2008. When addressing this recall, the company cited studies from 2008 that showed the risk of defective airbags in certain vehicle models.

The most recent news surrounding the Japanese manufacturer focuses on former Takata employees who have stepped forward to disclose that the company allegedly performed secret tests in 2004 when the first reports of defective airbags occurred. According to the employees, secret tests were ordered by Takata executives that indicated the airbags could rupture upon impact and release dangerous debris. These former employees have also accused the executives of ordering the test results to be thrown out and erased from company records.

Sadly, these defective airbags caused more than 130 injuries and four deaths. It is highly likely that Takata face legal action from those who were injured by the airbags before the 2008 recall.

Due to the alleged reckless, criminal and likely punitive conduct of Takata, even older cases, including those that would normally be barred by statute of limitations, could be viable against Takata.

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A 2-year-old was killed while trick-or-treating on Halloween after he was hit by bus.

According to a Polk County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, the Lake Wales toddler was in a stroller Friday evening with two other children when the adult pushing them across a street realized he had dropped his cellphone. The man stopped the stroller in the median and told the children to stay in it while he went to grab his phone. The boy managed to get out of the stroller and ran to where his grandmother was standing alongside the road.

A bus driver failed to see the toddler in the street and hit him. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.

No charges are pending at this time.

State Farm conducted a review of more than four million records of motor vehicle collisions that took place between 1990 and 2010. According to these records, there were 115 children killed in pedestrian collisions on Halloween night across the nation. This totals to an average of 5.5 children killed each year on Halloween. On a normal day of the year, an average of just 2.6 children are killed in pedestrian-related collisions. This data confirms that the risk of a child being killed in a pedestrian accident on Halloween is more than double than on any other day of the year.

A whopping 60 percent of fatal Halloween pedestrian crashes occur between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Children between the ages of 12 and 15 are the most likely to be killed in pedestrian accidents on Halloween. Kids ranging in age from five to eight were the age group with the second highest number of fatalities, with a total of 23 percent of the deaths. These deaths were found to occur more often in the middle of the street on Halloween than on the corners, which suggests that many fatal accidents were the result of children running out into the streets.

Drivers should be aware of the increased risks to kids  on Halloween night. Driver’s need to slow their speed and avoid using electronic devices. Distractions of any nature can prevent drivers from seeing child trick-or-treaters who might dart into the middle of the road.

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